Philip Grabowski

Resource constraints and partial adoption of conservation agriculture by hand-hoe farmers in Mozambique

Conservation agriculture is a set of practices widely promoted to increase agricultural productivity while conserving soil through reduced tillage, mulching and crop rotation. Adoption levels are low across southern Africa and farmers often use only some components on small portions of their land. This study uses in-depth interviews and partial budget analysis to explore adoption of conservation agriculture in Mozambiques Angonia highlands. Farmers described many benefits but there was little sign of adoption beyond plots where non-governmental organizations promoting conservation agriculture had provided inputs. Most farmers were adamant that conservation agriculture could perform better than conventional agriculture only if they applied fertilizer or compost. With current costs and prices, conservation agriculture is unprofitable except on small plots for farmers with low opportunity cost of household labour. These findings suggest that conservation agriculture can improve maize yields but capital and labour constraints limit adoption to small plots in the absence of free or subsidized inputs. Given the current ranges of prices for grain and inputs these manual forms of conservation agriculture will not be adopted on a large scale in Angonia. Nevertheless, small conservation agriculture plots can provide farmers with high yields where constraints are lowest.

The Economics of Conservation Agriculture in Africa: Implications of Climate Change

In this chapter, we summarize the available evidence on the agronomic and economic viability of conservation agriculture (CA) in sub-Saharan Africa and assess the likely impact of climate change on the agronomic and economic viability of CA. Using detailed data from Zambia, we compare the net present value of using various CA and conventional practices over a 10-year period and then analyze how those results are likely to change if rainfall becomes more erratic. CA is economically attractive especially when it allows farmers to overcome labor constraints during planting by distributing land preparation labor during the dry season. The results also show that when all three principles of CA are implemented, farmers will likely have more stable and higher yields than conventional tillage methods, although all types of farming will be negatively affected by dry spells. For these benefits to be realized, farmers must retain control of their residues, which, in turn, will require changing community norms about dry season grazing. Furthermore, the development of reliable markets for leguminous crops are necessary for achieving adequate rotations. Given the dynamic nature of smallholder agriculture, driven by climatic as well as socio-economic uncertainty, increasing farmers’ capacity to adapt is of utmost importance. Working with farmers to adapt CA to match their specific priorities and constraints provides an opportunity to develop skills for resilient and adaptable farming systems.