Factors affecting the choice of conservation agriculture practices adopted by smallholder cotton farmers in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Conservation agriculture (CA) has been widely promoted in Zimbabwe as an antidote to non-viable agricultural production and continual land degradation. However, the adoption process had been quite slow and has not yet entered into the exponential uptake phase. This study aimed at identifying factors that influence the level of adoption of CA components. A cluster analysis from results of a household survey administered to 146 households in Muzvezve II, Kadoma District, Zimbabwe identified five dominant CA strategies (clusters) practiced by cotton growing farmers. A multinomial logit model revealed that the choice of CA components adopted is positively influenced by farmer's age, formal education, access to extension services, labour, animal draught power availability and land size. The empirical results suggests that, to promote adoption of a complete package of CA policies that increase access to formal education and extension of CA should make strategic intervention through innovative methods of farmer to farmer extension services. Promotion of longer-term and effective CA can only be accomplished through targeting young educated farmers. It is of paramount importance as well to address the main factors leading to non-adoption and slow adoption such as labour and animal draught power availability.

Adoption and Impact of Conservation Agriculture on Smallholder Farmers’ Crop Productivity and Income in Luapula Province, Zambia

“…Ownership of labour saving equipment such as rippers coupled with the prestige associated with owning such implements increased the likelihood of adopting CA. This result is consistent with studies such as Chomba (2004), Umar et al (2010), Mavunganidze et al (2013), and Lugandu, (2013) who found that ownership of productive assets increases the likelihood of adopting a given technology. As regards gender, the study revealed that men and women were more likely to adopt CA by ripping and CA basins respectively from among the various variants of CA being promoted by Conservation Agriculture Project (CAP).…”

Behaviour of smallholder farmers towards adoption of conservation agriculture in Zimbabwe

“…Benefits of CA are realized upon simultaneous application of all principles of CA (Giller et al., ). However, ‘ideal’ CA is rarely practiced in smallholder farming systems of Zimbabwe (Pedzisa et al., ), southern Africa (Zira, Ignacio, Munyaradzi, & Nyamangara, ) and Africa in general (Giller et al., ).…”