Farmers going home for breakfast in Motoko district, Zimbabwe. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

23 September 2020, Lilongwe, Malawi – Last week a new project was launched to investigate the drivers and barriers to the adoption of Conservation Agriculture (CA) in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and to develop strategies to scale up its adoption.

The aim of the project, Understanding and enhancing adoption of Conservation Agriculture in smallholder farming systems of Southern Africa (ACASA) – a joint initiative led by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) – is to better understand the biophysical, socioeconomic, institutional, and policy drivers and barriers to the adoption of CA technologies and practices.

The project, which is supported by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, also brings together the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) alongside other partners including the Conservation Farming Unit, Foundations for farming and Total Land Care as part of efforts to scale up CA in the region.

Increasing the resilience of smallholders

In a speech read on behalf of the Zambian Minister of Agriculture Michael Katambo, Moses Mwale, Director of the Department of Agriculture at the Ministry, said, “It is now clear that current productivity and production levels cannot be expected to meet our requirements for food and nutrition security. Conservation Agriculture has a proven potential to increase and stabilize crop yields and to support sustainable and resilience production systems and rural livelihoods.”

Warming at twice the global rate, Southern Africa is one of the epicentres of global climate change. Erratic rainfall patterns, which have caused recurrent droughts, have resulted in the disruption of production systems. And according to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Regional Vulnerability Assessment Analysis, an estimated 44.8 million people in the region are currently food insecure.

Conservation Agriculture, however, could play a pivotal role in boosting food security.

Untapped potential

According to Christian Thierfelder, Principal Cropping Systems Agronomist at CIMMYT, “CA is a viable and proven climate smart farming system. Therefore, future research efforts should go towards understanding farmers' decision-making and behavioural change as well as profitability.”

Substantial on-farm evidence has been generated on the agronomic and economic benefits of CA. Despite this though, and the efforts of development partners, the adoption rate among smallholder farmers in Southern Africa remains low.

“We should not let the low adoption of Conservation Agriculture discourage us. Let us use this opportunity to reflect and identify the missing link and come up with more sustainable solutions to the problem,” said the IITA Director for Southern Africa, David Chikoye, speaking at the launch.

Collaborative efforts

FAO is playing a significant role in promoting the adoption of CA, particularly through the project Strengthening coordination, scaling up and governance of Conservation Agriculture in Southern Africa, which is aimed at increasing collaboration among partners in the region for the purpose of scaling up CA.

Patrice Talla, FAO Subregional Coordinator for Southern Africa, sees ACASA as a promising step forward: “This is an opportunity to emphasize the collaboration between our partners in the region. Partnership is a requirement to bring food and nutrition security to small farmers in Southern Africa as they face the impacts of climate change on their livelihoods.”