A major problem faced by small-scale farmers in northern Ethiopia is reduced crop yield due to increasing soil degradation resulting from repeated tillage and inadequate agronomic management practices. These practices have left soils and rainfed …
Conservation agriculture (CA) is widely promoted in sub-Saharan Africa both in open fields and in agroforestry where the practice is known as ‘conservation agriculture with trees’ (CAWT). Although advantages and disadvantages of CA are well studied …
Conservation agriculture (CA)- the simultaneous application of minimum soil disturbance, crop residue retention, and crop diversification -is a key approach to address declining soil fertility and the adverse effects of climate change in southern …
Long-term in situ soil and water conservation experiments are rare in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Eastern Africa. A long-term experiment was conducted (2005-2013) on a Vertisol to quantify the impacts of resource-conserving agriculture (RCA) …
It is remarkable that despite wide-ranging, in-depth studies over many years, almost no conservation agriculture (CA) studies consider gender and gender relations as a potential explanatory factor for (low) adoption rates. This is important because …
Since the paper by Giller et al. (2009), the debate surrounding the suitability of conservation agriculture (CA) for African smallholders has remained polarized between proponents and opponents. The debate also gave rise to a few studies that …
Due to the scarcity of alternative organic amendments, the retention of crop residue in fields can be considered key in promoting physical, chemical, and biological attributes of soil health in agricultural systems of developing countries. However, …
Cereal residues represent a major resource for livestock feeding during the dry season in southern Africa. When kept on the soil surface instead of feeding them to livestock, crop residues can contribute to increasing soil fertility and maintaining …
Competition for crop residues between livestock feeding and soil mulching is a major cause of the low and slow adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) in sub-Saharan Africa. Retaining crop residues in the field is not only a prerequisite for CA but …
Conservation agriculture (CA) is increasingly promoted in Africa as an alternative for coping with the need to increase food production on the basis of more sustainable farming practices. Success with adopting CA on farms in Africa has been limited, …