CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE IN EAST AND SOUTHERN AFRICA MAIN MESSAGES

What is and what is not climate-smart agriculture (CSA)? That existential question sparks debate, complicates implementation and fractures the development community. CSA X-rays provide a detailed analysis of what science and scientists tell us about the ‘climate-smartness’ of proposed CSA interventions. Each section contains an infographic that illustrates the potential impact of the intervention on outcomes when changing practices1. Key messages for the CSA X-ray on Conservation Agriculture in East and Southern Africa are:

1 X-rays were designed to print as either 4-page leaflets that include key messages and hints on interpretation or 2-page briefs.

Productivity

Yield benefits from using conservation agriculture, by comparison to conventional systems, are typically positive in the literature from this region but vary depending both on the cropping system, year and site (ranging from -20 to 200%). Information on the impacts on income is sparse and shows a diversity of possible affects.

Resilience/

Adaptive Capacity

Mitigation

Climate Risks

The Business Case

Scaling up

Barriers to adoption

Most of the data available relates to impacts on the physical resilience of the systems such as changes in soils chemical properties and affects on drought and largely suggests that conservation agriculture improves these system properties. Much less is known about the impact of conservation agriculture on economic and social properties of the system. However, expert opinion and limited data indicates that there may be tradeoffs in terms of labor and gender concerns with conservation agriculture. Conservation agriculture is unlikely to reduce greenhouse gas production or increase soil carbon stocks in East and Southern Africa with any of the many possible variations in implementation. Because of the positive affects on soil physical properties, conservation agriculture has potential to mitigate many of the precipitation and seasonal affects of climate change. In addition, the impact of rising temperatures may be mitigated to some degree due to soil cover. Conservation agriculture performs poorly across indicators of system performance including negative net present value, cost benefit and with delayed returns on investment. There has been relatively limited uptake of conservation in East and Southern Africa, with only 100,000 households or less predicted to be utilizing the practice in Zambia, Malawi or Zimbabwe, for example. The factors affecting adoption of conservation agriculture are inconsistent across studies. Many of factors have both positive and negative impacts depending on the study and few are universally influential in the same direction. Furthermore, most characteristic are only statistically significant in fewer than half of the studies except for ones such as income.

X

RESILIENCE

Bare bones evaluation of climate-smart agriculture practices & technologies

RAY

MITIGATION

COMpONENT pRACTICES

pRODUCTIVITY

CSA TECHNOLOGY

Combinations of minimal soil disturbance, crop rotations and maintaining soil cover

Conservation agriCulture (Ca)

in East & Southern Africa

Percent change in yield or income from the CSA practice relative to a baseline

practice for all crops combined. Dashed lines represent the mean Percent

change, and bar length shows the 95% confidence intervals around the mean.

Heat map showing effects of improved practice on greenhouse gas emissions and removals

land preparation

ploughing (p)

reduced tillage (rt)

Zero tillage (zt)

residue retention (r)

Cover Crops (cc)

Mulch (mul)

rotations (rr)

soil & Water ManageMent

nutrient ManageMent

Manure (man)

inorganic fertilizer (if)

agrobiodiversity

local variety (lv)

improved variety (iv)

trees (t)

The magnitude (size of bubble), sign (position of bubble), and amount of evidence (fill of bubble) for impact of CSA practices on resilience indicators. Color of the buble indicates the type of resilience.

YEILD

MaiZe (Ca)

CoWpea

INCOME

ChiCkpea

teF

groundnut

sorghuM

Wheat

Cotton

MaiZe & beans

MaiZe

MaiZe (rt)

beans

500-50-100 100 150 200 250 300

% changeEmissions intensity

Soil fluxes

Soil Carbon

Reduced tillagert

Zero tillagezt

Crop rotationrot

Residue retentionres

Cover cropcc

Mulchmul

Manureman

Inorganic fertilzerif

Improved varietiesiv

Treest

reduced tillage & crop rotation

ct rot

Biomasscarbon

No change

Increases GHG Emissions

Decreases of of fsets GHG emissions

reduced tillage & mulch

rt mul

reduced tillage & crop rotation & mulchCA

pHYSICAL

ConflictingWorsens Improves

ECONOMIC

SOCIALA lot

Some

None

SIZE OF EFFECT

TYpE OF RESILIENCE

AMT OF EVIDENCE

Water

Drought

female

work hours

ouput control by

women

ouput control by

men

water use effeciency

soil

moisture

field

farm

target

vulnera-

ble

male

work

hours

heat

no. products consumed

nitrogen use effe-ciency

genetic

no. product sales

amt. of product for sale

land-scape

soil carbon

soil nitrogen

erosion

labour

CLIMATE RISKS

BUSINESS CASE

SCALING UpCURRENT ADOpTION

1. High mean temperature2. Days with a max temp > 35ºC3. Days with a max temp > 40ºC

Temperature

4. Lower mean rainfall5. Higher mean rainfall6. Large scale flood

1

2 3

4

5

6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1

6 1

7 1

8

TEMpERATURE

pRECIpITATION

SEASONAL CHANGES7. Flash floods8. High 1-hour rainfall intensity9. Heavy hail events10. Rainfall distribution (variability) within season11. 10-day dry spells12. Seasonal droughts13. Consecutive seasonal droughts14. Later onset of rainfall season15. Earlier end date of the rainfall season16. Decreased predictability of the rainfall season17. Increased uncertainty in rainfall distribution18. Increases in cloudiness and humidity

significant reductionmoderate reductionminimal reduction

ZAMBIA 5-20%

MALAwI

ZIMBABwE

= 10k households

The relative reduction in climate risk by using conservation agriculture. Dots closer to the center indicate greater mitigation of each climate risk, identified by numbers.

(A)Change in economic performance relative to the conventional practice, (B) Semi-quantitative assessment of risk (change of decrease in yields) vs. reward (mean increase in yield) for various crops under CSA practices identified by code (C) Net returns (USD/ha) on investment over time.

BARRIERS TO ADOpTION

FarM & household CharaCteristiC

aMt oF evidenCe

0 100

iMpaCt on adoption

awareness

Attitude toward conservationProgram participation

Concern of erosionAwareness of environmental threats

Perceived health threatConcern for groundwater pollution

information

ExperienceTechnical assistanceSource of informationAccess to information

Management knowledge/skills

site conditions

RainfallSlope

Soil typeTemperature

High productivity soilHighly erodable land

Length of growing season

Market access

Output pricesDistance to paved road

availability of technology

Farm equipmentAvailability of machinery

household demographics

EducationAge

Farm sizeKin as partners

income

IncomeGross farm incom

Farm profitabilityOff-farm income

Importance of crop revenues in income

policy

Tenure

social connectivity

Membership in organizations

-100 0 100

Farm management

Area plantedImportance of livestock

Soil erosion rateFarm/field types

Proportion of ha irrigatedEmphasis on grain farming

Pesticides appliedCropping system/crop rotation

Impact of CA on production costs

Wealth & assets

Family laborHired labor

Debt level/ratio Wealth indicators

Impact on adoption shows the proportion of studies where farm and household characteristics have a positive (to the right) or negative (to the lef t)s impact on adoption, and significance shows the number of studies where that factor was significant (filled bar) or insignificant (open bar) on adoption.

(zt)

-7

(zt)

-5%

(zt)

-5%

(zt+mul)

-13%

(zt+mul)-4%

(zt+mul)

0%

(zt+mul)

-23%

(zt+rot+mul)

-23%

AConventional

practice

-25 %

Cost Benefit

Cost Benefit

net present value (20yr)

net present value (10yr)

net present value (3yr)

net present value (20yr)

net present value (10yr)

net present value (3yr)

Current rates of adoption of Conservation agriculture

BLOW RISK/HIGH REWARD

LOW RISK/LOW REWARD HIGH RISK/LOW REWARD

HIGH RISK/HIGH REWARD

cf

rtrt

rtrt

rt

rt

rt

rtrt

maize

sorghum

cotton

wheat

beans

tef

chickpea

cowpea

groundnut

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

1,600

1,200

800

400

0

conventional location 1 location 2

C

The CSA X-ray is based on published data and expert opinion. Sources used for each indicator can be found on the ‘CSA X-ray’ repository on Harvard’s Dataverse. We thank the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security for funding the Partnerships for Scaling Climate-Smart Agriculture (P4S) Project that conceived of the X-rays and the United States Agency for International Development for their support of staff executing the vision.

Christine Lamanna: c.lamanna@cgiar.org For general inquiries contact Todd Rosenstock: t.rosenstock@cgiar.org

MORE INFORMATION CONTACT

READING THE X-RAY

Description of the CSA technologies covered. Each has an abbreviation that will be used throughout the X-RAY. Percent change (%) in productivity indicators under CSA technologies as compared to conventional practices. The vertical line at 0% represents no change in productivity. In each colored bar, the mean percent change is shown as a dashed line, and the width of the bar represents the 95% confidence interval around the mean for percent change in productivity. The position of the bar indicates the magnitude of change and the size the bar is indicative to the variability for the crop and practice. Change in greenhouse gas emissions and carbon stocks under CSA shown as a heat map. Warm colors (orange to purple) mean an increase in climate forcing or lower mitigation potential, while cool colors (green to blue) mean a decrease in climate forcing or higher mitigation potential. Where there is no expected change or no data, the square is empty. Data based on published literature and expert opinion are shown for soil carbon, aboveground biomass, soil GHG fluxes, and emissions intensity (emissions per unit product). Impact of CSA practices on indicators of physical (blue), economic (green), and social (orange) resilience. The size of the bubble relates to the magnitude of change, for example a larger change in that indicator under CSA. The location of the bubble on the horizontal axis indicates the direction of the change. Bubbles to the right of the dotted line show improvement in resilience, while bubbles to the left decrease that proxy for resilience. Bubbles siting on the dotted line mean that there is conflicting evidence – sometimes that resilience indicator improves and sometimes it doesn’t. The fill (shading) of the bubble indicates how much evidence is available. Open bubbles mean the change is theorized but no evidence is available, shaded bubbles mean some evidence is available, and filled bubbles mean a lot of evidence is available. Around the semi-circle, unique numbers identify eighteen climate risks potentially addressed by CSA. The semi-circle is divided into three levels (boxes) indicating the degree to which the practice may mitigate climate risks (minimal, moderate, or significant) and colors representing various categories of climate risks (temperature, precipitation, and seasonal changes). For each climate risk, a circular mark is placed in the respective position (box) indicating how well that intervention addresses that climate risk. (A) Percent change in economic performance relative to the conventional practice for various indicators. Increases in economic performance are positive bars, whereas decreases in economic performance are negative bars. (B) Risk vs. Reward for CSA practice/crop combinations. Reward relates to the change in yield is on the vertical axis, and risk relating to the chance of decrease in yields is on the horizontal. (C) Illustrative economic performance of CSA practices relative to a control over time. For current adoption, each person icon represents a number of small farmers who have adopted that particular practice in that location. In Barriers to Adoption, each farm and household characteristic (listed in grey) has an associated impact on adoption (left orange panel) and significance (right blue-green panel). Impact on adoption panel shows the proportion of studies where that factor positively (to the right) and negatively (to the left) affected adoption. Interesting to note bars that cross the vertical center line (positive and negative effects depending on context) and the size of the bar indicating how many studies have included that factor. The significance panel shows the number of studies conducted on that factor (open bar) and the number where that factor significantly impacted adoption (filled bar).

PRODUCTIVITY

MITIGATION

RESILIENCE

CLIMATE RISKS

BUSINESS CASE

SCALING UP

TECHNOLOGIES