IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/ccsesa/301919.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Impact of Social and Institutional Factors on the Uptake of Conservation Agriculture: A Case of Zambia and Zimbabwe

Author

Listed:
  • Nyathi, Putso
  • Moyo, Thinah
  • Posthumus, Helena
  • Stevens, Joe

Abstract

Conservation agriculture (CA) involves the practice of three interlinked principles of minimum soil disturbance, a permanent soil cover and crop rotation. Despite the many stated benefits of the technology, its uptake in Africa has been slow. This study applies the theory of planned behaviour to investigate the attitudes, the role of the social system (social influence, by-laws and customs) and the institutional environment in the decision to practice CA principles and on the area under CA in Choma, Zambia and Nkayi, Zimbabwe. The study finds differing attitudes between districts towards CA outcomes. Local by-laws have a positive correlation with the practice of minimum soil disturbance but negative correlations with the practice of soil cover and crop rotation. Social influence and customs have significant relationships with the area under CA. Institutional support is perceived to be necessary for the practice of minimum soil disturbance but not so for the practice of crop rotation or on the area under CA. We conclude that the attitudes towards CA depend on the performance of the CA options promoted to farmers while the effects of the social system components and institutional factors on the uptake of CA depends on how the particular CA principle fits into the social and institutional environment in which it is promoted. We recommend agriculture extension services and policymakers to pay more attention to these issues in the promotion of CA.

Suggested Citation

  • Nyathi, Putso & Moyo, Thinah & Posthumus, Helena & Stevens, Joe, 2020. "Impact of Social and Institutional Factors on the Uptake of Conservation Agriculture: A Case of Zambia and Zimbabwe," Sustainable Agriculture Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 9(1).
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:ccsesa:301919
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.301919
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/301919/files/Paper%206.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.301919?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Raymond Mugandani & Liboster Mwadzingeni & Paramu Mafongoya, 2021. "Contribution of Conservation Agriculture to Soil Security," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-11, September.
    2. Omulo, Godfrey & Daum, Thomas & Köller, Karlheinz & Birner, Regina, 2024. "Unpacking the behavioral intentions of ‘emergent farmers’ towards mechanized conservation agriculture in Zambia," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Farm Management;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:ccsesa:301919. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ccsenet.org/sar .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.