Conservation Agriculture Research Updates - March 2026

This review article explores the role of farmer agency in enhancing the effect of extension models related to soil health. They want to empower farmers to innovate and adapt knowledge to identify more efficient systems. It reviews several factors that can improve farmer agency including education, economic opportunities, social networks and supportive policies. The paper proposes the need for policies and programs to improve farmer decision-making opportunities and farmer centered learning platforms, digital tools and to strengthen social networks with the hope that adoption and adaptation soil health solutions improves.

This article looks at the issue of declining soil health, soil organic carbon (SOC) and soil degradation and ways to sustain ecosystem services and human well being and food security in Africa. Aklso the need to do this when there are negative consequences of climate change. The paper says "soils of most agro-ecosystems in Africa have been subjected to land misuse and soil mismanagement, and thus are, severely depleted of their SOM content because of extractive farming practices. Thus, agronomic productivity, use-efficiency of inputs (e.g., fertilizers, irrigation, energy-based farm operations, seeds of improved varieties or choice of other species of animals or plants) and the nutritional quality of food produced is low." The paper then discusses options for reversing this declining soil health including CA, cover crops, crop-livestock systems, integrated soil fertility management, integration of crops and trees and more. The paper also suggests ways of encouraging farmers to adopt improved farming practices.

This paper looks at empirical evidence on the impact of farm-level investments in climate-smart agricultural practices related to conservation agriculture in some Congo Basin countries. They hypothesize that property rights to land and trees is critical for farmers to invest and manage forest land for conservation and try new agricultural practices. They use a model to test farmer choices in agriculture that includes tenure, climate, soils and social variables like gender and education 600 farms in the region. The results show that farmers choose one of three agricultural systems to maximize farm profit mindful of the current tenure regime and environmental conditions. Conservation agriculture techniques within climate-smart practices show benefits for smallholder farmers through improvements in soil health, soil moisture retention and enhanced crop yields. They conclude that farm-level investments improve farm incomes and enhance conservation effort for farmers perceiving climate change.

This papers looks at the possibility that if farmers adopt CA in the Democratic  Republic of the Congo (DRC) would reduce deforestation and create a safer environment for women. They also say that limited knowledge about the benefits of CA across countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has hindered its adoption. Taking this statement into account, the paper determines if consumers would be willing to pay a premium for CA grown maize. 600 farmers were surveyed in this study. Their results suggest that if CA adoption is to spread in the DRC, it will likely need to happen via increased yields or reduced costs before the farm gate and not premiums after the farm gate.

This is a chapter in another book looking at Sustainable Agricultural Intensification in East and Southern Africa. This chapter presents CA in the context of Africa as a management system to help smallholder farmers increase resilience climate change and variable weather. It also looks at the challenges to productivity and profitability while promoting sustainable land use and improving ecosystem services.

This is a new book published in 2022 specifically looking at CA in Africa. A table of contents can be found by clicking the CABI.org link above. The forward for this book says "Conservation Agriculture (the use of no tillage systems) to preserve soil structure and integrity has become an increasingly important step towards sustainable farming. This book brings together conservation agriculture and climate smart decision making processes for the first time, focusing on Africa.
It describes how farmers in Africa are successfully adopting Conservation Agriculture as an alternative to the unsustainable conventional farming practices and as a solution to loss of agricultural productivity, soil erosion and land degradation, climate change challenges and ever-increasing food insecurity."

This paper presents overview findings from trans-disciplinary research projects from Southern, East, and West Africa to evaluate the potential importance of integrated participatory soil health studies designed to inform context-specific recommendations and policies for resilient African food systems. The paper identifies how integrated research can help shared learning and knowledge exchange required for upscaling sustainable land management practices enabled through enhanced farmer participation.

This paper analyzes key stakeholders in the agricultural innovation system (AIS) in Malawi using CA as an example. They analyze roles, organizational capacity and collaboration of stakeholders in Malawi's CA innovation system. NGOs dominate the national CA agenda, while smallholder farmers remain passive recipients of CA interventions. Many CA promoters lack technical and financial capacity, and pursue limited collaboration, which diminish prospects of inclusive stakeholder engagement. Their findings indicate a need to: (1) strengthen understanding of AIS approaches among CA innovation system stakeholders; (2) build stronger partnerships in CA research and development by strengthening stakeholder platforms and social processes; (3) strengthen collaboration advisory mechanisms to facilitate knowledge-sharing, resource mobilization and joint programme implementation with strengthened feedback loops.

This paper is not about CA but is interesting because the issue of mechanization in Africa contested. This paper examines nine propositions that relate to this topic. Many are not supported by evidence. This paper proposes there should be a research agenda to resolve controversies and support evidence-based policies for sustainable and inclusive agricultural mechanization.

This study reviewed the literature on benefits, trade-offs, adoption and adaptation of CA in sub-Saharan Africa. They show that benefits are inconsistent and there are trade-offs with crop residue use, weeds and insect pests, labour demands and short-term yield penalties despite CA improving soils and sustaining crop yields with generally low adoption in SSA. They suggest that adoption constraints include 1. the magnitude of transformation of management practices required by farmers moving to CA, 2. The multiple trade-offs associated with CA practices and 3. the incompatibility of CA practices to local conditions. They suggest focusing CA in Africa in places where it best fits and identifying and overcoming locally important trade-offs through adaptation and finding farm-specific optimal combinations in terms of feasibility and benefits.

This forum paper is a synthesis and discussion of 14 lessons learned from experiences for achieving farm-level impact with smallholder farmers in Africa. The lessons are discussed and conclusions are reported.

This study analyzed 57 in-depth farmer interviews to understand why why they had limited CA adoption and what would be required to to intensify CA more. Most farmers reported higher yields with CA but this was related to input intensification (mainly herbicides) and was constrained by finances. Farmers identified constraints across their physical, financial, human and informational resources for low intensities of CA. The authors suggest ways to overcome this.

This paper used the applied principles of Transformative Learning and Communicative action for potential for innovation technologies like CA in Burkino Faso. In this country CA has not been successfully integrated beyond the trial scale. The stakeholder mapping showed that dominant players and traditional ways of communicating are essential for success. This learning process is recommended for other programs.

This paper on Africa highlights and discusses the current problems which include soil erosion, desertification, nutrient imbalances, acidity, salinization, deforestation, and soil compaction. The second part looks at the problems of soil and agricultural productivity and  human health, which resulted in loss of fertile land and biodiversity, increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, nutrient depletion, loss of ecosystem services, malnutrition, and other human health issues. The third part proffers potential solutions to tackle soil degradation in Africa. They conclude that iintegrated approaches that promote sustainable soil management, such as conservation agriculture, crop rotation, agroforestry, afforestation, organic farming, and community engagement, would have a significant impact in resolving the menace of soil degradation.

This economics paper says that adoption of CA increases production while reducing GHG emissions but adoption in the developing World is low. They suggest it takes multiple years of continuous adoption for farmers to realize positive results. The paper uses an on-farm experiment in N. Ghana to identify how incentives and peer information affects adoption. They found no overall effect of peer information but found evidence that long-term adoption increased adoption especially if benefits included higher yields.

This paper addresses what the impact of climate change will have on food security in Sub-Saharan Africa since recent unusually high rates of flooding and droughts are occurring. The authors say that SSA must prepare agricultural soils for this climatic variability to sustain food security. Stakeholders must adopt water-smart strategies that maintain proper soil-water balance. They should focus on manageable inherent soil properties that control the susceptibility/adaptability of cropping systems to climate change. They recommend that CA techniques that target improving soil organic matter and maintaining soil life; protecting the soil from compaction and erosion; reducing soil disturbance; enhancing soil infiltration and groundwater recharge capacity, must be applied to our soils. They also suggest that stakeholders also invest in water harvesting infrastructure. They also highlight the importance of improved communication on improved technologies and policies to accelerate adoption of climate change mitigation strategies.

This study focuses on the effect of CA on smallholder household wellbeing including productive assets, livestock and housing material quality in Mozambique by surveying CA adopters and non-adopters. They selected farmers who were non-adopters but had received CA technical assistance, those were non-adopters but had not received assistance and adopters. The adopters had higher farm production and better quality housing materials but there was no association  with livestock ownership. The results show the adoption of CA led to improvements in household well being.

This review looks at soil and water conservation (SWC) in terms of farmer practices to explore how SWC represent a pathway to improve soil health and sustainable agriculture in Africa and what the best-fit SWC practices in rainfed situations. They show that options, such as Conservation Agriculture (CA), Agroforestry (AF), as well as integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) and field-scale rainwater harvesting (RWH), remain promising for the preservation and improvement of soil health in Africa’s farmlands and improving the resilience of agrosystems to climate change and variability as well as droughts.

This study estimated the the spatial-temporal variations of maize yields from 13-year on-farm trials from 4 countries in Southern Africa. Agronomic data from long-term CA trials is used with gridded biophysical and socioeconomic variables. Comparisons were made between CA and CT practices with above and below average precipitation. The variable importance analysis showed that the altitude, precipitation, temperature, and soil physical and nutrients conditions variables explained most of the variation in maize grain yield. Maps were generated to identify the locations where CA had a yield advantage over CP during seasons with below and above-average precipitation. The paper concludes that multi-source remotely sensed data, coupled with advanced and efficient machine learning algorithms provides accurate, cost-effective, and timely platforms for predicting the optimal locations for upscaling sustainable agricultural technologies. 

I attached this book information for people interested in CA in Africa. The book will be available in December 2021. Agriculture in Africa today faces major challenges including increased costs, climate change effects and a need for more sustainable production intensification methods. This book looks at Conservation (no-tillage) agriculture as a major alternative sustainable agriculture practice in Africa including its spread to various African countries in the past decade as more development and research has enabled its extension and uptake. The material was presented at the Second Africa Congress on Conservation Agriculture which was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, 9-12 October 2018. The main theme of the Congress was: Making Climate Smart Agriculture Real in Africa with Conservation Agriculture: 

This document from FAO is relevant to sustainable agricultural mechanization for Africa. The publication is based on case studies of hire service providers from two regional workshops: the first held in Grand Lahou, Côte d’Ivoire, with the participation of Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal and the second in Kampala, Uganda, with the participation of Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia. Based on the analysis of the main characteristics of the enterprises encountered in the workshops combined with documentary analysis, five business models were identified. This document discusses each one. Value propositions, customer relationships and partnership development are all examples of business model building blocks that the new generations of hire service providers should explore in the coming years.

This article looks at Climate Smart Agriculture and highlights three important challenges for CSA activities in Africa which provide insights into contested debates surrounding CSA's ability to respond holistically to the complex realities facing resource-constrained farmers in the global South. The three challenges are market policies, diversified livelihood strategies and growing competition for land and other resources. This paper looks into the political economy processes surrounding these three issues so as to bring critical attention to factors relevant to African agricultural development that highly impact farm-level practices and carry important implications for rural livelihood outcomes.

This paper analyzed in-depth, semi-structured interviews with farmers who implement CA to understand why they do so at limited intensities and what is needed to intensify their CA activities. Most farmers reported substantial yield increases related to input increases but constrained by financial resources. Overall, the intensity of CA use was constrained by physical, financial, human and informational resources. The paper proposes intensification of four principal components of CA over time; strategic tillage, soil protection, crop diversification and input management as opposed to strict packaging of CA practices. This will allow farmers to locally adapt CA to build their own way to complete CA utilization and with less need for subsidization.

This meta-analysis in 16 different sub-Saharan Africa countries provides data that contests the claim that CA leads to increasing crop yields  in smallholder farming systems. Their analysis shows that on average only slightly higher CA/ZT yields are obtained compared to conventional systems. 3.7% for 6 major crops and 4% for maize. Larger yield responses for maize (8.4%) result from mulching and crop rotations (2 of the other pillars on CA along with minimal soil disturbance. Their data also showed that yields increased with years of adoption (Fig 4) -- a slight increase in year 1 but 10% in year 10. They conclude that CA is not a technology to overcome low crop yields in the short term. However, I contend that there are many benefits to farmers who adopt CA in the first year, even if yields are equal to conventional practices like reduced costs, better water use efficiency and more. But read the paper first.

This study evaluated the impacts of CA on crop yield and profitability over 6 years in Ethiopia using a barley-wheat rotation. They compared permanent and semi-permanent raised beds versus conventional tillage. Both bed planting treatments out yielded CT plots every year and provided the highest marginal rate of return.