The use of participatory processes in wide-scale dissemination of micro dosing and conservation agriculture in Zimbabwe

Participatory technology development has been used for quite some time. However, little is known about how farmers perceive participatory methods and processes. Understanding farmers’ concerns about the participatory process can be an important starting point and can further the ultimate aim of encouraging sustained technology adoption. An ex-post participatory technology development and transfer evaluation was carried out in Zimbabwe in 2006/07 involving 231 farmers. It was revealed that use of demonstration trials encouraged the most participation and subsequent adoption and adaptation of the technologies to suit specific needs. The participatory nature of the process encouraged greater knowledge sharing among farmers and gave them more confidence in the technology. In order to increase the gains of the participatory process, feedback loops should be built in to allow improvements and modifications to be made to the techniques being promoted.Participatory approach, technology, dissemination, adoption, transfer, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Science in Agricultural Relief and Development Programs: The Case of Conservation Farming In Zimbabwe

Drought is endemic to southern Africa. In Zimbabwe farmers have been experiencing drought once every two to three years. Relief agencies have traditionally responded to drought by providing farmers with enough seed and fertilizer to enable them to re-establish their cropping enterprises. But, in the absence of these interventions there are limited sustainable options for farmers to maintain higher productivity levels. ICRISAT has been working with government, NGOs and the donor community to test more sustainable farming strategies that will increase food production levels even under drought conditions. For years, ICRISAT sought to develop more drought-tolerant varieties of sorghum, pearl millet and groundnut. But these offered only limited gains in productivity. More recently, ICRISAT and its partners have been testing strategies to sustainably improve crop productivity. These encompass two major components – conservation farming techniques that include the use of planting basins, which concentrate limited water and nutrient resources to the plant, and the precision application of small doses of nitrogen-based fertilizer. These simple technologies have increased average yields by 1575 percent, being obtained by more than 300,000 farm households. Rather than simply handing free inputs to farmers, this strategy teaches farmers how to apply the inputs most efficiently. The pursuit of input-use efficiency provides higher and more sustainable productivity gains necessary to achieve food security in drought-prone farming systems. A farm enterprise budget analysis has been employed to show that it is more viable to adopt conservation farming techniques particularly under drought conditions.Drought, Farmers, Relief, Zimbabwe, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, International Relations/Trade, Marketing, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Changing hydroclimatic and discharge patterns in the northern Limpopo Basin, Zimbabwe

Changing regional and global trends in climate and discharge, such as global warming-related declines in annual rainfall in south-eastern Africa, are likely to have a strong influence on water resource availability, and to increase livelihood risk. It is therefore important to characterise such trends. Information can be obtained by examining and comparing the rainfall and runoff records at different locations within a basin. In this study, trends in various parameters of temperature (4 stations), rainfall (10 stations) and discharge (16 stations) from the northern part of the Limpopo Basin, Zimbabwe, were statistically analysed, using the Spearman rank test, the Mann-Kendall test and the Pettitt test. It was determined that rainfall and discharge in the study area have undergone a notable decline since 1980, both in terms of total annual water resources (declines in annual rainfall, annual unit runoff) and in terms of the temporal availability of water (declines in number of rainy days, increases in dry spells, increases in days without flow). Annual rainfall is negatively correlated to an index of the El Niño – Southern Oscillation phenomenon. The main areas of rising risk are an increasing number of dry spells, which is likely to decrease crop yields, and an increasing probability of annual discharge below the long-term average, which could limit blue-water availability. As rainfall continues to decline, it is likely that a multiplier effect will be felt on discharge. Increasing food shortages are a likely consequence of the impact of this declining water resource availability on rain-fed and irrigated agriculture. Declining water resource availability will also further stress urban water supplies, notably those of Zimbabwe’s second-largest city of Bulawayo, which depends to a large extent from these water resources and already experiences chronic water shortages. Keywords: climate variability, climate change, discharge analysis, Pettitt test, rainfall analysis, water resources, Limpopo Basin, Zimbabwe, Southern Afric

Soil-water conservation and rainwater harvesting strategies 3 in the semi-arid Mzingwane Catchment

8 Abstract 9 Various soil water management practices have been developed and promoted for the semi arid areas of Zimbabwe. These include a 10 variety of infield crop management practices that range from primary and seconday tillage approaches for crop establishment and weed 11 management through to land forming practices such as tied ridges and land fallowing. Tillage methods evaluated in this study include 12 deep winter ploughing, no till tied ridges, modified tied ridges, clean and mulch ripping, and planting basins. Data collected from the 13 various trials since the 1990s show that mulch ripping and other minimum tillage practices consistently increased soil water content 14 and crop yields compared to traditional spring ploughing. Trial results also showed higher soil loss from conventionally ploughed plots 15 compared to plots under different minimum tillage practices. 1

Climate smart agriculture rapid appraisal (CSA-RA): A tool for prioritizing context-specific climate smart agriculture technologies

Approaches that aim to identify and prioritize locally appropriate climate smart agriculture (CSA) technologies will need to address the context-specific multi-dimensional complexity in agricultural systems. The climate smart agriculture rapid appraisal (CSA-RA) is a mixed method approach that draws on participatory bottom-up, qualitative, and quantitative tools to assess the heterogeneity of local contexts, and prioritize context-specific CSA options. This is an imperative if countries are to respond to the COP21 agreement and meet their intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs). The CSA-RA is designed to assess biophysical including climatic, socio-cultural, economic and technological characteristics at the household, farm and community/regional level. The CSA-RA employs gender-disaggregated methods, including gender differences in perceptions of climate change and its impacts. The CSA-RA combines common participatory rural appraisal (PRA) and rapid rural appraisal (RRA) tools into one methodology, that disaggregates the gender dimension, and includes resource mapping; climate calendars; historical calendars; cropping calendars; organization mapping; transect walks; key informant interviews; farmer interviews; and pairwise ranking matrix. The tool collects qualitative and quantitative data from various stakeholders (farmers, local leaders, researchers, local-level agricultural experts, private sector actors, donor organizations, and policy implementers), allowing expansive analysis, triangulation and validation. Application of the CSA-RA in Tanzania and Uganda reveals heterogeneity across the sites in terms of vulnerability, constraints and CSA priorities among different social groups (gender) and agro-ecological zones. Thus, the CSA-RA allows stakeholders to simultaneously take into account biophysical and socio-economic aspects to target and implement CSA

Socioeconomic and institutional factors influencing adoption of conservation farming by vulnerable households in Zimbabwe

Since 2004, there has been a series of initiatives in Zimbabwe to promote conservation agriculture (CA) through various donor-funded relief initiatives with the aim of improving crop production among vulnerable farmers. In April 2007, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) implemented a survey to collect data from 12 districts and 232 households that had been practicing hand hoe-based conservation farming (CF) for at least one prior season with extension and input support from non-governmental organizations. This study was undertaken to better understand the household and institutional factors that influence CF adoption patterns among the beneficiaries of these relief initiatives. Results from the study show that institutional support and agro-ecological location have strong statistical influence on the adoption intensity of different CF components. Besides the practice of preparing basins, at least 70% of the households had also adopted the following components of CF: manure application in the planting basin, topdressing with nitrogen fertilizer at the 5-6 leaf stage of the cereal crop, and timely post-planting weeding. Household labor availability and impacts of HIV/AIDS did not limit the intensity of adoption of CF. An enterprise budget analysis proved that because of the significant yield gains realized with CF, the technology is more viable than conventional tillage practices of broadcasting manure and overall spring tillage on the day of planting. The increased profitability in adopting CF was also reflected in steady increases in the area each household committed to CF from an average area of 1450 m2 in 2004 to more than 2000 m2 in 2007.Conservation farming Adoption intensity Tobit model Extension Labor availability

The use of participatory processes in wide-scale dissemination of micro dosing and conservation agriculture in Zimbabwe

Participatory technology development has been used for quite some time. However, little is known about how farmers perceive participatory methods and processes. Understanding farmers’ concerns about the participatory process can be an important starting point and can further the ultimate aim of encouraging sustained technology adoption. An ex-post participatory technology development and transfer evaluation was carried out in Zimbabwe in 2006/07 involving 231 farmers. It was revealed that use of demonstration trials encouraged the most participation and subsequent adoption and adaptation of the technologies to suit specific needs. The participatory nature of the process encouraged greater knowledge sharing among farmers and gave them more confidence in the technology. In order to increase the gains of the participatory process, feedback loops should be built in to allow improvements and modifications to be made to the techniques being promoted

Science in Agricultural Relief and Development Programs: The Case of Conservation Farming In Zimbabwe

Drought is endemic to southern Africa. In Zimbabwe farmers have been experiencing drought once every two to three years. Relief agencies have traditionally responded to drought by providing farmers with enough seed and fertilizer to enable them to re-establish their cropping enterprises. But, in the absence of these interventions there are limited sustainable options for farmers to maintain higher productivity levels. ICRISAT has been working with government, NGOs and the donor community to test more sustainable farming strategies that will increase food production levels even under drought conditions. For years, ICRISAT sought to develop more drought-tolerant varieties of sorghum, pearl millet and groundnut. But these offered only limited gains in productivity. More recently, ICRISAT and its partners have been testing strategies to sustainably improve crop productivity. These encompass two major components – conservation farming techniques that include the use of planting basins, which concentrate limited water and nutrient resources to the plant, and the precision application of small doses of nitrogen-based fertilizer. These simple technologies have increased average yields by 15-75 percent, being obtained by more than 300,000 farm households. Rather than simply handing free inputs to farmers, this strategy teaches farmers how to apply the inputs most efficiently. The pursuit of input-use efficiency provides higher and more sustainable productivity gains necessary to achieve food security in drought-prone farming systems. A farm enterprise budget analysis has been employed to show that it is more viable to adopt conservation farming techniques particularly under drought conditions