Developing pathways to improve smallholder agricultural productivity through ecological intensification technologies in semi-arid Limpopo, South Africa

Abstract

Agriculture faces an enormous global challenge of feeding nine billion people by 2050. This means a comprehensive intensification of agriculture is required. Ecological intensification is gaining momentum as a clearly defined vision for increasing agriculture productivity and sustainability. How ecological intensification could be tailored to benefit smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains the major question. In this study, we develop pathways relying on ecological intensification technologies and suiting different farm types of smallholder agriculture. This study relies on multiyear engagements with agricultural experts and smallholder farmers in Ha Lambani, South Africa and leads to the identification of farmer groupings. We analyse 40 in-depth semi-structured interviews with farmers which leads to the identification of farming patterns and constraints. We present how farming systems analysis of challenges and constraints helps to identify and link specific ecosystem services with suitable ecological intensification options. We conclude that the expert-based classification of farmers offered a more contextualized representation of farming system heterogeneity, where tailored ecological intensification technologies could play a major role in improving agricultural productivity. Beyond this community, it emphasizes the need to consider farmers type heterogeneity as a strong decision parameter for targeting ecological intensification.

Keywords:

• farm types
• smallholder agriculture
• ecological intensification
• ecosystem services

Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to Alliance for Collaboration for Climate and Earth System Sciences (ACCESS), South African Water Research Commission (WRC), African Climate Development Initiative (ACDI) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) [grant code: NE/N014472/1] for funding the work, and the Limpopo Department of Agriculture and the Institute of Rural Development, University of Venda for their technical support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate: Prior informed consent was sought from each interview respondent.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.

Notes on contributors

Farirai Rusere and Siyabusa Mkuhlani were responsible for developing the initial content of the manuscript, including the literature search, data collection and analysis.

Olivier Crespo and Lynn Dicks were the supervisors of the research and provided guidance in terms of the article structure. They also directed the retrieval of relevant literature and finalization of the manuscript.

ORCID

Olivier Crespo http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7320-9428

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by funding from South Africa's National Research Foundation (NRF), Water Research Commission (WRC), African Climate Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, South Africa (ACDI) and Alliance for Collaboration for Climate and Earth System Sciences (ACCESS). Lynn Dicks was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) [grant code: NE/N014472/1]. Interpretation of the findings and conclusions drawn from the study are the responsibilities of the authors and not on any part of National Research Foundation (NRF), Alliance for Collaboration for Climate and Earth System Sciences (ACCESS), Water Research Commission (WRC), African Climate Development Initiative (ACDI) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).