Conservation agriculture Tanzania_casestudy.pdf - Sokoine ...

Full conservation agriculture, however, is today rarely practised outside SouthAmerica (Ekboir 2003; Derpsh 2005; Bollinger et al. 2006), and is indeed difficultto achieve right from the onset. Usually farmers who are willing, or obliged bycircumstances, to reassess their farming practices and follow the path to moresustainable agriculture, embark on a long journey that takes them several years oreven longer. This journey consists of consecutive phases, each characterized by useof specific practices that increasingly incorporate practice and mastery of the threeprinciples. No journey appears to be linear, and no journey seems to comprise theexact same sequence of phases (fig. A), although some paths are more commonlyfollowed than others.Permanentfull CAsystems2. Stepwise adoption3. Periodic CA1. Quick and complete adoptionEndpointsEntrypointsRT/MTCurrentpracticesEnd of project4. ‘failure’ is always possibleCycles/yearFigure A. Entry points and four hypothetical pathways towards adopting conservationagriculture:1. Quick and complete adoption of conservation agriculture in its fullest form2. Stepwise adoption of conservation agriculture practices, which may or may not lead tocomplete adoption over time (RT = reduced tillage, MT = minimum tillage)3. Conservation agriculture practised during some cycles but not others4. Use of conservation agriculture practices stops soon after the end of the project, perhapsbecause incentives are no longer available.While the hope of many farmers and agronomists is that eventually most farmers ina given region will reach the full conservation agriculture phase, and better soonerthan later, no phase in itself, no individual conservation agriculture system or setof practices can be considered intrinsically superior to the others (Triomphe et al.forthcoming).Rather, they should be viewed as what can realistically be achieved at a given time andin a given farm context, depending on the environmental, socio-economic, institutionaland political circumstances and constraints. Some factors and conditions clearly relateto the characteristics, preferences and experiences of individual farmers and farms—such as the capital available for investing in equipment and inputs, the choice ofConservation agriculture as practised in Tanzaniaix