The adoption of conservation agriculture by smallholder farmers in southern Africa: A scoping review of barriers and enablers

The Anthropocene has brought with it many challenges, the primary of which are climate change and food security. The growing global population increasingly demands more from a shrinking resource base, while variable climate conditions make future provision uncertain. To address issues of low agricultural productivity and land degradation, conservation agriculture (CA) has been promoted in smallholder settings across Africa. CA is an agricultural package that consists of three key principles (minimum soil disturbance, mulching, and crop rotation) and its success depends on the simultaneous implementation of all three principles. However, CA has met with limited success. A scoping review was conducted to assess the barriers and enablers of CA for smallholder farmers in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) – a regional inter-governmental economic community. The scoping review included peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, reviews, and grey literature written in English that focused on the contextual links between CA adoption and the smallholder context, since 2015. Six electronic databases were consulted, and included records were charted according to a pre-defined data extraction form. A total of 66 records were included. A qualitative content analysis was performed. The findings indicated four central themes – physical resources, human resources, informational resources, and financial resources. The four central themes and their respective categories, detailing barriers and enablers, were combined to produce the Conservation Agriculture Suitability Framework for Smallholder Farmers. The review contributes to the knowledge base of the CA discipline and practice by revealing the contextual determinants of successful CA implementation. Ultimately, the success of CA in southern Africa will be underpinned by how well it fits into the broader smallholder farming system.