This brief provides emerging evidence from the implementation of the Climate-Smart Agriculture project in Zambia. The analysis clearly indicates that better screening of agro-ecological and socio-economic constraints and incentives for adoption of conservation farming are needed in order to achieve its effective and durable adoption. It also suggests that alternative approaches to sustainable agricultural intensification that better address the constraints and objectives of sustainable agricultural intensification in the near term are needed. This may include modifications of the current conservation farming technologies as well as broadening the range of technologies considered to include other forms of sustainable land management and agricultural intensification.