| Abstract |
Conservation Agriculture and Smallholder Farmers in Eastern and Southern Africa-Leveraging Institutional Innovations and Policies for Sustainable Intensification and Food Security (CASFESA) project was funded by EC-IFAD and implemented by CIMMYT in Ethiopia and Kenya (Eastern Africa), and Malawi (Southern Africa) in collaboration with national partners, namely; Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute (ARARI in Ethiopia), Kenyan Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), and Department of Agricultural Research and Technical Services (DARTS in Malawi). The overall goal of the project was increasing food security and incomes of resource poor smallholder farmers in Eastern and Southern Africa through pro-poor technological and institiutional innovations that improve productivity and enhance the resilience and sustainability of farming system. CASFESA project was implemented in Jabitehnan and South Achefer districts in Ethiopia, Embu county in Kenya and capitalized on the earlier conservation agriculture (CA) interventions in Balaka, Nkotakota and Salima districts in Malawi. Role of institutional innovations and technological interventions in enhancing crop productivity and income of resource poor smallholder farmers were systematically assessed through a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) approach where CA-based technologies were demonstrated in randomly selected treatment villages. Each cropping season, farmers in the treatment villages were invited to visit the demonstration plots in their villages and participated in the CA-based technology evaluations. With the aim of supporting better adoption of CA-based practices in the treatment villages, in addition to the demonstration of CA-based practices, the project facilitated/strengthened institutional and market arrangements that could enhance resource-poor smallholder farmers’ access to CA related inputs like herbicides and farm equipments. This is CASFESA project ending report. The report systematically documents activities conducted and achievements made by the CASFESA project from its inception in on 1st June 2012 to its closing on 31st March2015. The main activities undertaken by the project include documentation of demographic, agroecological and socieconomic characteristics of CASFESA project districts through secondary data collection, rapid appraisal and baseline survey, establishment of demonstration plots in the project sites; field monitoring and evaluation; organizing farmers’ field days; linking farmers to agro chemicals suppliers, organizing project briefing and launching meetings, conducting project review and planning workshops; undertaking adoption monitoring survey in Embu; implementation ofencouragement design for scaling out of CA-based technologies; conducting market and value chain studies in the intervention districts in Ethiopia and Kenya; and developing policy recommendations through international public goods (journal articles) focused on the identification of potential recommendation domains for CA in the target countries. The project established 90 demonstration plots in 45 treatment villages (60 demo-plots in 30 villages in Ethiopia and 30 demo-plots in 15 treatment villages in Kenya). The demonstration plots were used to familiarize farmers with CA practices and compare the performance of CA plots to their conventional counterparts and to demonstrate the short term and long term effects of CA technologies. Demonstration plots were closely monitored to track progresses. Monitoring of the field activities was done by extension agents working in the treatment villages and researchers from partner institutions (ARARI in Ethiopia and KALRO in Kenya) and researchers from CIMMYT. In Malawi, already existing CA demonstration plots were used for monitoring purpose. During the three cropping seasons the project was implemented in Ethiopia, a total of 3970 farmers (among which 13% were female) were participated in farmers’ field days evaluating the maize and intercropped legume crops on zero tillage plots with conventional practices. Similarly in Kenya, a total of 3489 farmers (among which 56% were female) participated in the field days in four seasons. In addition to male and female farmers, agricultural research and extension experts, cooperative unions leaders, seed enterprises, agro-chemical dealers (Syngenta in Kenya, and Damot in Ethiopia), village and district level administrators, agents from Insurance Company (Kilimo-Salama-Kenya) were also participated in most of the field days and project planning and review meetings. Preliminary results of the baseline survey shows that in both Ethiopia and Kenya farmers follow mixed crop-livestock farming system. The main problems of the farming system were low soil fertility, terminal moisture stress, crop pests and diseases, shortage of improved varieties, inappropriate cropping practices (mono-cropping), seasonal feed shortage, animal diseases and parasites, low performance of local animal breeds, and shortage of improved forage seed. Poor market infrastructure and limited access to inputs and output market, and land pressure were also identified as major problems in the survey areas. Results from the adoption monitoring survey conducted in Embu/Kenya showed that farmers in the treatment village expanded CA-based practices but only part of the CA principles (i.e. not a complete CA package). In most of the cases, farmers adopted two of these three practices. There were few farmers who adopted the whole package on small farm areas. The main reason for adopting of CA was yield advantage over its convetional counterpart. Lack of cash, lack of labor, and shoratege of livestock feed were the majorreasons reported by farmers for not adopting CA-based practices. Minimum tillage saves labor but making permament furrows and ridges demands more labor in the first year. In Malawi, according to the discussions made with farmers and extension agents, CA practices saved labor cost and increased their maize productivity. The results of maize yield data collected from demonstration plots of CA based technologies (zero tillage and intercropping with legumes) and conventional practices (tillage and mono-cropping) over three cropping seasons in Ethiopia and four cropping seasons in Kenya showed CA plots gave consistently higher maize yield than conventional tillage plots. However, adoption of CA based practices (especially crop residue retention) needs simultaneous development in animal feed that can partly or fully replace crop residues. To this end introduction of forage legumes like cowpea could create a win-win situation where legumes fix atmospheric nitrogen and the above ground biomass could be used as animal feed. In Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi, CASFESA project identified potential recommendation domains for CA based practices. The result showed that, in these three countries, considerably large areas of farmland are highly suitable for CA. Malawi was found to be better than the other two countries in terms of proprotion of crop land suitable CA. The project also succeeded in producing public goods. During the write up of this report, one article was published, three articles were submitted to journals, and four articles were under internal review, one article in the development process, and one MSc thesis was completed. |
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