Conservation farming among small-holder farmers in E. Africa: adapting and adopting innovative land management options.

Despite wide adoption in several parts of the World, conservation farming still remains a largely unknown opportunity among small-holder farmers in Eastern and Southem Africa. This paper investigates the causes behind low adoption among smallholder farmers and discusses approaches to improve adoption. The paper also presents field results and intervention approaches from farmer driven trials on conservation farming in Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia. Focus is on semi-arid agro-ecosystems where water is a major constraint for crop growth. Here conservation farming is promoted as a form of water harvesting. On highly degraded crop land, especially fields with plough-pans, yield levels of maize are increased with more than a factor 2 just by changing implement from a disc-plough to a sub-soiler (tilling at approximately 35–45 cm depth). On less degraded land (the farming systems studied in Kenya) the mere change of implement is not enough to improved yield levels. Successful adoption of conservation farming will depend on several external driving forces. There is a large need to build capacity among extension staff, teachers at professional schools, researchers and managers. This requires agricultural policies that specifically favour conservation farming (as, e.g., in Zambia). Local markets need to be developed, in order to assure the availability of affordable and good quality implements at local level.