Soil erosion and declining soil fertility is threatening vast surfaces of agricultural lands in Africa and consequently the existence of farms and farming families. The development and promotion of sustainable land management is therefore a prime objective of research and development organisations. Conservation tillage - zero or minimum tillage - is one of the practices which has proved to combat soil degradation efficiently. While millions of hectares of farm land are already under zero tillage in Latin America, in Africa conservation tillage is restricted mainly to larger estates. There are, however, enough examples demonstrating, that conservation tillage can be practised successfully by small holder, too.

GTZ, FAO, the Agricultural Research Council of South Africa (ARC) in collaboration with the Zimbabwe Farmers Union have started an initiative to enhance the spread of conservation tillage practices in small holder farms of south-eastern Africa. A first step is this workshop, bringing together practitioners from various African countries, and in addition resource persons from Latin America, United States of America and New Zealand.

Focus of the workshop is on the elaboration of concepts for the dissemination of conservation tillage, it is to be real "working" workshop and not a conventional conference. Consequently only a limited number of papers is presented in order to allow more time for the group working and discussions. A part from key notes during the opening session, only 3 papers will be presented in each working group to stimulate the discussion. These papers should cover different aspects: technologies, approaches and institutions/policies focusing on the topic of the respective workgroup.

Depending on the definite number of participants the working groups will be subdivided into 3 interdisciplinary groups of 15 - 20 persons, in order to permit an active participation of all group members. As the three themes of the workshop are very much interrelated this procedure appears to be more promising than parallel sessions for each theme.

The workshop is split into two parts. The first part is open to all participants. The second part is organised by FAO and the invited participants are coming from the policy level, mainly. However this "expert consultation" is open to all interested workshop participants. The results of the group work of the first part of the workshop should build the basis for the elaboration of the guidelines.

The majority of the participants are coming from South-eastern African countries. In order to preserve a working atmosphere, the participation is restricted to three persons per country. In a rule participants are selected and invited by the organising parties. Participants should bring in expertise from practice, research and extension, and the policy framework, respectively.

In order to bring in international expertise a limited number of resource persons is invited, especially from key country members of the Latin American Conservation Tillage Network (RELACO), from the International Soil Tillage Research Organisation (ISTRO) as well as experts from FAO and GTZ.

Only few invited papers will be presented during the workshop. However, each participant is welcome to prepare a paper on his specific experience within the thematic areas of the three workgroups. All papers will be distributed to workshop participants before the workshop.. Papers should be short, maximum 6 pages, and focus one of the three main issues, technologies, dissemination or policies. Papers should be send to the workshop secretariat, where they have to arrive latest on June, 17th.

The main results of the workshop will be reported in the proceedings and sent to all participants. The proceedings will contain also all the workshop papers.

Separately will be sent the draft of the guidelines ("Code") for environmentally sound tillage practices for the protection of soils.