A Guide to Conservation Agriculture in Zimbabwe - Canadian ...

section TWO
Promoting Conservation Agriculture Among Farmers
As extension officers you can:
• Provide extension support to households affected by HIV and AIDS.
• Assist such households to identify suitable crops to grow and provide nutrition advice.
• Encourage farmers to pool their labour and exchange ideas.
• Encourage farmers to work in groups so that group members help out a member when he/she is unable
to work in the fields because of illness.
• Establish linkages with home-based care programmes and encourage or allow the participation of caregivers
by deliberately targeting them regardless of their socio-economic status. Increased yields in
community or individual gardens arising from the practice of conservation agriculture will permit any
surplus to be given to orphans and the sick in home-based care programmes.
• Deliberately target people with disability and engage them right from the outset. Conservation agriculture
can be adopted by people with all forms of disability.
Barriers to implementing conservation
agriculture
Conservation agriculture may not always be readily
adopted by farmers because it conflicts with conventional
farming practices. Some barriers to promoting and
implementing conservation agriculture arise from deeprooted
socio-cultural beliefs, and the downgrading of
indigenous farming methods over past decades. Some
examples are given below
• Ploughing: for many years farmers in Zimbabwe have
been taught that ploughing is essential for crop
production because it makes the soil soft and enables
roots to penetrate easily, when in fact the opposite is
true.
• Clearing or burning stubble: farmers like to burn crop
residues and weeds in fields after cattle have grazed
it or use fire to manage pastureland. These practices
have in the past been promoted by extension officers.
• Clean fields: this barrier of burning is reinforced by the
notions that a ‘good farmer’ has a clean field and that
organic matter should be ploughed into the soil. In
fact mulch on the soil surface allows more rain to
infiltrate and promotes fertility better.
• Growing maize: because this is the staple crop in
Zimbabwe many people prioritise growing maize over
any other crop even when conditions are not well
suited to it and other more drought resistant crops
such as sorghum or millet may provide better yields.
• Communal grazing: this is a long established practice
throughout Zimbabwe and many farmers believe it
to be socially unacceptable to not permit communal
grazing of their fields.
• Jealousy: sometimes farmers who experiment with
new practices and do better than others are the object
of resentment and accusations. This may make it
unappealing for farmers to change their methods and
to take risks.
• Land ownership and tenure: this is an economic and
political issue as well as a cultural and social one. If
land is owned communally (or by the state), individual
farmers may have little incentive to improve it.
27 Farming for the Future