This paper analyzes how a set of widely promoted agricultural practices, including reduced tillage, crop rotations, legume intercropping as well as the use of modern inputs, affect crop yields and their resilience (i.e. probability of disastrously low yields) in Zambia using panel data from the Rural Incomes and Livelihoods Surveys...

Climate change is undermining the ability of African nations to feed themselves. Women smallholder producers are on the front line of dealing with the impacts, but are not first in line for international climate finance. Wealthy countries have committed to helping countries in Africa to adapt to climate change, but...

The countries of East and Southern Africa have made major commitments to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment, and they are starting to pay off. A number of countries have achieved substantial progress towards gender parity in primary school enrolment. Nearly all countries have adopted quota systems requiring women’s participation...

This edition of Nature & Faune journal will be a special Issue to mark the International Year of Soils. It is planned to be issued during the Conference of the African Soil Society taking place in Ouagadougou - Burkina Faso from 2nd to 10th December 2015. The special edition of...

In light of the surge of foreign large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA) in developing countries, concerns have been raised that large-scale agricultural projects could negatively affect smallholder livelihoods. There is, however, very little evidence beyond case studies that support these claims. Drawing on nationally representative household datasets from 2000 and 2010,...

Efforts to enhance smallholder farmers’ involvement in agricultural markets under the World Food Programme (WFP) Purchase for Progress (P4P) programme have led to a variety of nutrition-sensitive activities. In many rural communities where P4P and partners work, these context- and country-specific efforts have begun to increase farming families’ access to nutritious...

Many rural development initiatives attempt to improve the lives of small-scale farmers. Some succeed, some fail – but all of them can offer valuable lessons for the future. In a two-phased documentation workshop, a group of experts working in IFAD-funded projects in Zambia described, analysed and wrote down some of...

The purpose of this study was to estimate the impact of minimum tillage and crop rotation on maize yields and incomes for farmers adopting the strategies. The study used cross sectional data collected in 2012/13 from 1231 households across six districts of Zambia and applied propensity score matching techniques and...

This paper uses household data collected from livestock-rearing communities in 3 districts in Southern Province of Zambia and corner-solution econometric models to measure the effect of productive potential and market access on livestock production. We also test for the existence of heterogeneous effects across agro-ecological regions, livestock species and poverty...

The Platform for Agricultural Risk Management (PARM) is an initiative focused on making risk management an integral part of policy planning and implementation in the agricultural sector in developing countries. The overall objective of PARM is to contribute to sustainable agricultural growth, reduce food insecurity, and improve livelihoods of rural and...

The study conducted in Southern Zambia investigated smallholder farmers’ use of indigenous knowledge to respond to rainfall variations and soil fertility problems. Farmer and key informant interviews and observations were employed to collect data. A total of 60 smallholder farmers and 6 key informants were interviewed. Chipepo lies in the...

Africa’s rising population growth and the continuous degradation of agricultural lands have raised questions about the suitability of the current agricultural system. There is a growing need to investigate different crop production systems that prevent soil degradation while increasing productivity. Conservation agriculture (CA) offers a promising solution. Conservation agriculture is...

Implementation Guidance for Policymakers and Investors

Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) has helped people address the challenges of food insecurity and environmental degradation while conserving wildlife and other natural resources. COMACO is one of the few programs that operate at the scale of an entire ecosystem—contributing to increased wildlife numbers, better protected habitats, improved food security,...

Agriculture is vital to Zambia’s economic development and is a mainstay for the livelihoods of a large proportion of the population. Agricultural production is mainly dependent on rain-fed hoe cultivation with maize as the principal staple food crop. About 18 percent of national maize production comes from Zambia’s Southern province....

This publication, Organic Agriculture: African Experiences in Resilience and Sustainability, demonstrates that organic management can benefit people, the economy and ecosystems and that this can be achieved in Africa, where hunger and degradation stubbornly persist, despite decades of development efforts.The work presented in this volume stems from the conference on...

Agriculture in Africa south of the Sahara is becoming increasingly risky due to extreme climate variability. In recent times, scientific studies have strongly suggested that many developing countries face substantial environmental and social challenges, with food insecurity high on the list (Vogel and O’Brien 2003). With a relatively large and...

It is important that any international investment should bring development benefits to the receiving country in terms of technology transfer, employment creation, upstream and downstream linkages and so on if these investments are to be “win-win” rather than “neo-colonialism”. These beneficial flows are not automatic: care must be taken in...

Agriculture is arguably the most important vehicle for realising economic development, creating employment and reducing poverty in Africa. In the Eastern and Central Africa (ECA) sub-region, agriculture accounts for about 43% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and over 60% of exports. About 70% of the population and nearly 90%...

Southern African Agriculture and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Analysis examines the food security threats facing eight of the countries that make up southern Africa — Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe — and explores how climate change will increase the efforts needed to achieve sustainable food security...