Abstract
Conservation agriculture continues to be promoted in developing nations as a sustainable and suitable agricultural practice to enhance smallholder productivity. A look at the literature indicates that this practice is successful in non-African countries. Thus, this research sought to test whether minimum tillage (MT), a subset of conservation agriculture, could lead to a significant impact on smallholder households’ welfare in Southern Tanzania. Using cross-sectional data from 608 randomly selected smallholder households, we applied propensity score matching to determine the effects of adopting minimum tillage on smallholder households’ per capita net crop income and labor demand. Our results indicated that minimum tillage adoption has positive impacts on smallholder households’ per capita net crop income. Further, it reduces the total household labor demands, allowing households to engage in other income-generating activities. However, the adoption rate of minimum tillage is in the early majority stage (21.38%). Thus, we propose the government to support household credit access and extension-specific information to improve the probability of adopting minimum tillage.
Highlights
Climate change and its adverse effects on agricultural production have been the topic of discussion globally
In this paper, we address two research questions; that is, what factors determine the adoption of minimum tillage among the smallholder horticultural crop producers in Southern Tanzania, and the subsequent impacts this farming approach has on their welfare proxied by per capita net crop income and labor demands
From the results obtained in this paper, despite the increased promotion of conservation agriculture, minimum tillage, smallholder farmers are still uncertain about its profitability in Southern
Summary
Climate change and its adverse effects on agricultural production have been the topic of discussion globally. The observed temperature and rainfall volatility and the consequent decline in agricultural productivity have led to the promotion of various climate adaptation technologies in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) [1]. Conservation farming has been significantly endorsed to increase agricultural productivity, and stabilize crop yields under seasonal variations. In Southern Tanzania, one of the prioritized climate adaptation technologies is minimum tillage, an element of conservation agriculture [2]. The current wave of debate indicates that minimum tillage and other conservation farming practices are the remedy for the diminishing agricultural productivity induced by climate change and variability [3]. Debates about the effects of minimum tillage principles have led to questions about their suitability for smallholder farmers [5]
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