Conservation Agriculture Research Updates - May 2025

This paper from China looks at service providers as a way to promote CA. It identifies the stakeholders of normative Conservation Agriculture technology adoption behavior and the relationship between agricultural machinery service organizations, farmers and agriculture-related governments. They developed a unique evolutionary game model to evaluate the decision making characteristics of tripartite behavior and simulate the evolution trend of stakeholder behavior. They suggest that agriculture Governments, service providers and farmers can develop stable strategies. The study lays a foundation for countermeasures and suggestions to further promote farmers’ implementation of Conservation Agriculture technology.

This is a second paper from the ASABE conference in Nebraska. It reports progress with CA in Cambodia. Adoption is slow at the moment because of low engagement of local services for machinery. This also compared different no-till seeders for maize. Sunn hemp was grown as a cover crop before planting maize. Three main treatments were implemented with (i) sunn hemp used as green manure crop and buried through tillage, (ii) sunn hemp crimped by Cambodia made crimper, and (iii) sunn hemp crimped by USDA crimper. Two different no-till seeders, the one-row Morrison seeder mounted on a 19-hp Oggun tractor and a four-row Brazilian seeder mounted on 75-hp John Deere tractor. The Brazilian seeder saved 50% seed and 80% of the time. Corn yield was also higher. Crimped plots had higher yields than disked plots. The conclude no-till seeders lead to higher corn yields.

This is another paper looking at mechanization and service providers but focused on empowering women farmers. The paper describes the many hurdles and drudgery women face farming their land with out-migration of male members of the household. For example, fewer rights over land make it more difficult for women to access subsidies, finance, or mechanization. The paper describes 3 ways that sustainable mechanization can empower women and respond to their predicament. The paper also provides a catalogue that highlights the potential for smallholder farmers, including women, to earn an income via mechanization hire service. The information for each machine or equipment is also included in this paper. The target audience includes extensionists, gender experts, agricultural engineers, government officials, donors, micro-finance institutions, and implementing partners.

This is a valuable paper describing aspects of the use of service providers to enable smallholder farmers to adopt new technologies and scale up adoption. It uses direct seeded rice (DSR) in Eastern India as a case study. This study explores with zero tillage drill owners the decision processes they apply in deciding how to use their zero tillage drills. Respondents highlight a complex web of interrelated considerations that highlight the additional complexities of DSR as compared to existing practices. They conclude that the methods they used would be useful for exploring other other farmer decision making.

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 FAO training manual is relevant to country level trainers with material covering the basic principles of the use and management of mechanization for smallholder farmers. It is also relevant and useful for training service providers, local entrepreneurs that assist farmers in experimentation and adoption of CA. This manual is designed to provide hire service providers – whether already in the business or intending to start their own hire service business – with skills and competencies in both the technical and the management aspects of the small-scale mechanization business.

This study looks at looks at adoption of mechanization of appropriate equipment for resource poor farmers cultivating small and scattered plots using service providers. This paper uses the Scaling Scan tool to assess three project case studies designed to scale different Mechanization Service Provider Models (MSPMs) in Mexico, Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh. It provides a useful framework to assess the gap between international lessons learned on scaling captured in forty tactical questions over ten “scaling ingredients” as perceived by stakeholders involved in the projects, as well as private sector actors and government employees. Their results have important implications for similar development interventions aimed at increasing smallholder access to mechanization services at scale.

This paper from Nepal looks at the issue of crop field fragmentation  that farmers use to ensure irrigation and rainwater in rice and wheat growing areas. This requires lots of labor and reduces the area for planting crops. The paper looks at the possible use of laser land leveling (LLL) to overcome these problems. Obviously, smallholder farmers cannot own a laser leveler so the paper looks at using service providers to allow these smallholders to benefit from this technology. They found that farmers were willing to pay for LLL services. The paper goes on to discuss LLL in relation to farmers with higher land acreages and farmers with low irrigation access.

This paper explains some of the benefits of CA adoption in India including a yield advantage, water savings, reduction in costs,  increased net returns, reduction in global warming potential and other climatic benefits.  They estimate that global warming potential of about 25 Mt CO2 eq. i.e., about 15% of the emission from the crop sector (agricultural soil, rice cultivation and crop residue burning) is mitigated by the adoption of various CA practices and other mitigation technologies in India. But adoption is hindered. They conclude that business models need to be developed for creating custom hiring centers, manufacturing hubs and enhanced capacity development of the stakeholders to realize the full benefits from CA.

This is an interesting article that looks at custom hiring centers (CHC) for mechanization in Nepal and South Asia (India and China). The paper reports that there has been minimal reliable reporting or evidence on the success of their efforts. Yet, there is very good reason to believe that with refined backstopping and informed selection, CHCs can be successfully used to provide mechanization access for underserved geographical areas and their communities. The paper ends with recommendations, observations and considerations for policy and agricultural development professionals and the existing CHC's management committees (MCs) around establishing and/or the improving CHCs and their management.

Nepal has enacted an agricultural agenda on mechanization to improve , productivity, address labor scarcity, economic growth and sustainability. Yet Nepal has yet to see substantial mechanization in agriculture. This research aimed to provide a baseline to understand progress made towards Agri-mechanisation on the Nepal Terai. They used a non-binary ‘Stepwise Process of Mechanisation’ framework  for this investigation. Across nearly all machinery, a primary reason for limited progression to sustained adoption was a lack of service providers, a manifestation of limited machinery ownership, meaning current broad subsidy programs aimed at procurement may not be achieving intended outcomes. With targeted intervention, rapid rural mechanisation is possible in the near future in Nepal. This work lays the foundation for future work to explore the drivers, implications and inclusiveness of agri-mechanisation, utilising the identified typologies, both in Nepal and more broadly where increased nuance in understanding the status of agricultural mechanisation is warranted.

This interesting paper looks at the use of digital tools to allow farmers to access mechanization using the Uber model. This service provider provision for smallholder farmers was compared in India and Nigeria. How does it work in practice? And what is its potential to reduce the transaction costs of tractor service provision, both for tractor owners and for smallholders who use tractor services? For the empirical analysis, a mixed-methods approach was applied involving approximately 400 respondents and comprising net-maps (a participatory mapping tool), focus group discussions, interviews with tractor owners and other stakeholders, and a survey among farmers. Overall, the paper shows that Uber for tractors is a pioneering concept, but investment in enabling conditions, such as digital literacy and network coverage, is required to harness the full potential of such digital innovations for smallholder farmers in the developing world.

The objective of this study was to evaluate CA cropping systems for rainfed maize as an alternative to the traditional tillage-based cropping systems (CT) in the context of family farms, using a multi-criteria model that represents the point of view of farmers in Brazil. Farmers considered several aspects for evaluating the cropping systems, using five criteria (with sub-criteria): (a) costs; (b) yield; (c) labour; (d) human health and environment; and (e) production risks. Considering all criteria, CA was better appraised than CT. However, a new local policy measure that subsidizes the hiring of mechanized tillage services overturns this outcome, indicating the importance of exogenous factors. 

This study explores the social inclusiveness of zero-tillage (ZT) wheat adoption in Bihar, India. ZT is a proven technology for enhancing wheat productivity while boosting profitability and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the densely populated Indo-Gangetic Plains. With an average landholding size of 0.39 ha, most farmers in Bihar depend on custom-hiring services to access the technology. They use a panel dataset from 961 wheat-growing households that spans a six-year period to analyze ZT adoption dynamics over time while accounting for the role of social networks and access to service provision. They find that as awareness of the technology increased the service economy expanded. Land fragmentation replaced total landholding size as a significant adoption determinant, which also affected the quality of ZT services received. Hence, farmers with small but contiguous landholdings appear to have gained a significant degree of access over time. We conclude that early-stage assessments may be misleading, and that private sector-based service provision can contribute to socially inclusive development outcomes as markets mature.