FISRI Zambia

What is conservation agriculture?

Conservation agriculture is a farming practice of managing agro-ecosystems for improved and sustained productivity, increased profits and food security, while preserving and enhancing the resource base and the environment.

Conservation agriculture has three pillars:

• minimum tillage, which is continuous minimum mechanical soil disturbance;
• permanent organic soil cover
• crop rotation and incorporation of legumes

Conservation agriculture in Zambia

• Conservation Agriculture has been promoted for many years by NGOs and by the Conservation Farming Unit of Zambian National Farmer’s Union. The method can increase yields for smallholders by up to three times.
• Funding: Mainly funded by EU and the Royal Norwegian Government from 2009 until end of 2012 (16.9m EUR) 
• Future: EU’s four-year Conservation Agriculture Scaling Up program to start in 2013. Agriculture remains a  key sector for EU in Zambia until at least 2020, in support of Zambian Government’s vision to make conservation agriculture available to 600,000 of Zambia’s small scale farmers by 2015.

Conservation agriculture faces several challenges:

• Varied understanding of conservation agriculture among stakeholders
• Low appetite of the Government to financially support conservation agriculture
• Weed control, land preparation and conflictbetween soil cover on fields and livestock for crop residues
• Crop diversification (for better nutrition)
• Limited area under conservation agriculture per farmer

More information

• Conservation agriculture in Zambia on Conservationagriculture.org
• EU and FAO partnership on Conservation Agriculture
• Scaling up CA in Zambia (World Bank Institute video)