Adoption of renewable soil fertility replenishment technologies in the southern African region: Lessons learnt and the way forward

Abstract

Low soil fertility is one of the most important biophysical constraints to increasing agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa. Several renewable soil fertility replenishment (RSFR) technologies that are based on nutrient re-cycling principles have been developed in southern Africa. Some success stories have been recorded (e.g. nitrogen-fixing legumes), but the adoption of RSFR technologies has generally lagged behind scientific advances thereby reducing the potential impacts of the technologies. This paper describes the major RSFR technologies being promoted in the region, synthesizes available information regarding their adoption by farmers, and identifies the challenges, key lessons learnt and the way forward for up-scaling RSFR technologies in the region. The review indicated that farmer uptake of RSFR technologies depends on several factors that can be grouped into broad categories: technology-specific (e.g. soil type, management regime), household-specific (e.g. farmer perceptions, resource endowment, household size), policy and institutions context within which RSFR is disseminated (inputs and output prices, land tenure and property rights), and geo-spatial (performance of species across different bio-physical conditions, location of village). Adoption of RSFR technologies can be enhanced by targeting them to their biophysical and social niches, facilitating appropriate policy and institutional contexts for dissemination, understanding the broader context and dynamics of the adoption process, a paradigm shift in the approach to the dissemination of RSFR (e.g. expanding RSFR to high value crop systems, exploring synergy with inorganic fertilizer) and, targeted incentive systems that encourage farmers to take cognizance of natural resource implications when making agricultural production decisions.

The Pattern and Process of Adoption and Scaling up: Variation in Project Outcome Reveals the Importance of Multilevel Collaboration in Agroforestry Development

“…The results of this study suggest in line with earlier research [19,32] that the availability of information and training are important for farmers' decisions to start testing a new technology whereas socio-cultural issues becomes an additional challenge for a continuation beyond the testing phase leading to adoption of the technology [16][17][18][19][20]. This study also demonstrates the importance of governance and collaboration for the adoption process, the need to integrate project activities and capacity building into local structures to provide leverage in adaptation, adoption, and scaling up.…”

“…The above results show, in line with Pollini [16], Ajayi et al [19], and Johansson et al [32], that the explanation to the contradictions similar to those found in this study often lies in the institutional and social-cultural contexts and requires a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the adoption processes of the respective study areas. In the decision to continue using a technology or not lies not only biophysical, technical and economic considerations, the prevailing socio-cultural contexts such as customs, obligations, beliefs and supportive governance are also important.…”

“…The point of departure for this study was previous studies stressing the importance of the socio-cultural context and governance system in agroforestry development and the development process itself [16,17,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]32]. Apart from the differences revealed among villages influencing agroforestry adoption in Johansson et al [32], the study pointed out the need to further study the socio-cultural and governance differences at multiple levels and the dynamics of the scaling up process itself [32].…”

“…This multiple method approach enables us to better consider the socio-cultural realm and the governance context within which the adoption of agroforestry takes place stressed in a number of agroforestry adoption studies (e.g., [11,16,[18][19][20]29]). Similar multiple-method approaches have proved useful in other research fields, e.g., health sector [44,45], recreation [46] and in inter-sector studies of health and horticulture research [47].…”

“…Issues widely recognized to be critical to adoption of agroforestry, such as risk and uncertainty, the impact of labour, and market or tenure policies, were rarely investigated [17,18]. Similarly, Ajayi et al [19] has argued that the explanation to the contradicting results of some agroforestry adoption studies lays in the institutional and social context. Mainly based on adoption studies of improved tree fallow, Kiptot et al [20] have argued for the need to consider households in different stages of adoption, e.g., testers/experimenters, re-adopters, pseudo-adopters and adopters as motives differ during these stages.…”