Sustainable Farming in Practice: Building Resilient and Profitable Smallholder Agricultural Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa is at crossroads. With a rapidly growing population of 1.2 billion and changing climates, the continent faces major development challenges, including food insecurity, climate change, resource degradation, poverty, gender inequality, and social exclusion. While there are multiple competing narratives promoted in the high-input, industrialised world to address climate change and the resilience of agricultural systems (e.g., regenerative agriculture, agroecology), there is an ongoing debate and genuine questions about the appropriateness of these approaches to small-scale farmers in SSA. African agricultural systems are unique, characterised by low productivity, nutrient mining, land degradation, hoe culture, and fragmented and diversified small farms. Though environmental pollution and over-dependence on fossil fuel-powered mechanisation are rarely topping the priority list, climate change is becoming a major concern. The top-down narratives from environment-concerned communities lack the tools to address the most pressing and immediate challenge of local communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, namely (i) intensification by increased crop productivity per unit of inputs, (ii) increased access to rural energy forcing farmers to use available biomass for cooking instead of soil regeneration; (iii) the intent of no use or reduced mineral fertilisers, in a system marred by nutrient mining over centuries; and (iv) failure to address recurrent drought through integrated soil water management interventions. To address these specific challenges, we present context-specific, outcome-oriented farming solutions as a viable and appropriate strategy called ‘sustainable farming’. We argue that the nature-based narratives will remain to be important but will be better adopted if they respond to local demands and context-specific challenges of small-scale farmers. By means of three successful land restoration programmes in East Africa, we present eight outcomes that should be addressed to ensure sustainable farming of small holdings and reduce the risk of climate change. For these innovations to be adopted at scale, we proposed to put in place incentive mechanisms and functional last-mile delivery systems.