Family Farming Knowledge Platform

Smallholder conservation agriculture

Rationale for IFAD involvement and relevance to the East and Southern Africa region

Africa’s rising population growth and the continuous degradation of agricultural lands have raised questions about the suitability of the current agricultural system. There is a growing need to investigate different crop production systems that prevent soil degradation while increasing productivity. Conservation agriculture (CA) offers a promising solution. Conservation agriculture is a climate resilient technology and management system that has demonstrable potential to secure sustained productivity and livelihood improvements for millions of climate-dependent farmers working in semi-arid areas around the world. Success stories are recorded for some countries in Asia, and in Australia and Brazil. However, for sub-Saharan Africa adoption of the technology has lagged behind these other countries, and concerns have been raised as to the suitability of the technology within the smallholder farming context.

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Publisher: International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
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Organization: International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
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Year: 2014
ISBN: 978-92-9072-262-5
Country/ies: Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Geographical coverage: Africa
Type: Policy brief/paper
Full text available at: http://www.ifad.org/pub/pf/ca.pdf
Content language: English
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