This paper demonstrates how crop diversification impacts on two outcomes of climate smart agriculture; increased productivity (legume and cereal crop productivity) and enhanced resilience (household income, food security, and nutrition) in rural Zimbabwe. Using data from over 500 smallholder farmers, we jointly estimate crop diversification and each of the outcome variables within a conditional (recursive) mixed process framework that corrects for selectivity bias arising due to the voluntary nature of crop diversification. We find that crop diversification depends on the land size, farming experience, asset wealth, location, access to agricultural extension services, information on output prices, low transportation costs and general information access. Our results also indicate that an increase in the rate of adoption improves crop productivity, income, food security and nutrition at household level. Overall, our results are indicative of the importance of crop diversification as a viable climate smart agriculture practice that significantly enhances crop productivity and consequently resilience in rural smallholder farming systems. We, therefore, recommend wider adoption of diversified cropping systems notably those currently less diversified for greater adaptation to the ever-changing climate.

This paper concerns the role of crop diversification in improving household food security in central Malawi. In this country, the agricultural sector is dominated by smallholder farming and rain-fed food production systems that are facing increasing challenges from land degradation and declining soil fertility. Maize is the staple food crop, and as such, the majority of farmers grow it regardless of land suitability. This has led to what scientists have labeled as “maize poverty trap.” In the event of prolonged drought, maize fails thus leaving farmers food insecure. However, research in Sub-Saharan Africa has shown that crop diversification provides smallholder farmers with a diversity of diet, improves their income, and nutrition security. Due to increased cases of malnutrition and food insecurity, in the wake of climate change, government of Malawi has in the past few years intensified extension efforts for crop diversification. The study is based on a sample of 271 randomly selected smallholder farming households from central Malawi. It investigates the influence of crop diversification and other household socioeconomic characteristics on the household Food Consumption Score and Household Food Insecurity Access Score. In our analysis, we rely heavily on a combination of ordinary least squares techniques and some descriptive statistics. Our results show that crop diversification, cattle ownership, access to credit and attaining of education have a positive and significant effect on the household Food Consumption Score. Precisely, crop diversification, cattle ownership and access to credit are all significant at 5% level, while education is significant at 10%. In addition, crop diversification and attaining of formal education by household head were found to have a negative and significant effect on Household Food Insecurity Access Score and were all significant at 1% level. Based on our study findings, we conclude that crop diversification is one viable option in smallholder farming that can ensure establishment of resilient agricultural systems that can contribute significantly to household food security. In terms of policy, the results imply that the current efforts by government of Malawi to intensify promotion of crop diversification should remain a priority policy direction due to the continued malnutrition and food insecurity threat. This is particularly so in this era of climate variability that poses an extra burden to farmers.

This article is concerned with the adoption of small-scale irrigation farming as a climate-smart agriculture practice and its influence on household income in the Chinyanja Triangle. Chinyanja Triangle is a region that is increasingly experiencing mid-season dry spells and an increase in occurrence of drought, which is attributed largely to climate variability and change. This poses high agricultural production risks, which aggravate poverty and food insecurity. For this region, adoption of small-scale irrigation farming as a climate-smart agriculture practice is very important. Through a binary logistic and ordinary least squares regression, this article determines factors that influence the adoption of small-scale irrigation farming as a climate-smart agriculture practice and its influence on income among smallholder farmers. The results show that off-farm employment, access to irrigation equipment, access to reliable water sources and awareness of water conservation practices, such as rainwater harvesting, have a significant influence on the adoption of small-scale irrigation farming. On the other hand, the farmer’s age, distance travelled to the nearest market and nature of employment negatively influence the adoption of small-scale irrigation farming decisions. Ordinary least squares regression results showed that the adoption of small-scale irrigation farming as a climate-smart agriculture practice has a significant positive influence on agricultural income. We therefore conclude that to empower smallholder farmers to respond quickly to climate variability and change, practices that will enhance the adoption of small-scale irrigation farming in the Chinyanja Triangle are critical, as this will significantly affect agricultural income. In terms of policy, we recommend that the governments of Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique, which cover the Chinyanja Triangle, formulate policies that will enhance the adoption of sustainable small scale-irrigation farming as a climate-smart agriculture practice. This will go a long way in mitigating the adverse effects that accompany climate variability and change in the region.

In southern Africa, conservation agriculture (CA) has received a lot of research and promotional support from various organizations in the past decades. Conservation agriculture is largely promoted as one of the few win–win technologies affordable to farmers, in the sense that potentially it improves farmers’ yields (in the long term) at the same time conserving the environment. This is because conservation agriculture reduces nitrogen loss in the soil, promotes water and soil conservation and improves agronomic use efficiency of applied nutrients. However, some concerns have been raised over the feasibility of conservation agriculture on smallholder farms given constraints imposed by the biophysical and institutional realities under which smallholder farmers operate. The main aim of this study is to answer the question whether conservation agriculture is resulting in tangible livelihood outcomes to smallholder farmers. The counterfactual outcome approach was used to estimate ex post impact of conservation agriculture adoption on one of the key livelihood outcomes—food security. The study that utilized a data set covering 1623 households in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique found no significant impact of conservation agriculture adoption on Food Consumption Score of farmers in Zimbabwe and Malawi. Possible reasons for the insignificant of CA impact on food security in Zimbabwe and Malawi could include the small land areas currently devoted to CA, and the failure to implement the full complement of practices necessary to set off the biophysical process that are expected to drive yield increases. In Mozambique, conservation agriculture significantly improved the Food Consumption Score for farmers exposed to the technology. A possible reason for effectiveness of CA in Mozambique could be due to the fact that often CA is being promoted together with other better cropping management practices such as timely weeding and improved seed varieties, which are poorly practiced by the generality of farmers in a country just emerging from a war period. This paper provides one of the few ex post assessments of the impact of conservation agriculture adoption on household livelihood outcomes—food security. Given the mixed findings, the study suggests that conservation agriculture farmers in the three countries need to be supported to adopt a value chain approach to conservation agriculture. This entails the introduction of commercial or high-value crops in the conservation agriculture programmes, value addition on farmers produce, access to the necessary support services such as markets for seed, fertilizer, herbicides and equipment as well as reliable extension. We believe that under such circumstances conservation agriculture can effectively reduce food insecurity and poverty in the medium to long term.

Enhancing adoption rates of climate-smart agriculture practices and their impact on livelihoods requires promotional persistence, complemented by a thorough socioeconomic analysis that recognizes the heterogeneity of smallholder farmers. Farm typologies are a useful tool to assist in understanding and unpacking the wide diversity amongst smallholder farmers to improve both up- and out-scaling of climate-smart agriculture practices. Our study typifies farm households in southern Africa based on socioeconomic factors prompting adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices. We use a combination of principal component analysis for necessary data reduction and cluster analysis to identify typical farm households and their socioeconomic characteristics. It is evident from our results that various socioeconomic factors define clusters and can be associated with adoption and use of climate-smart agriculture practices in smallholder farming. We conclude that farm typology identification is an important step towards the promotion of climate-smart agriculture practices in smallholder agriculture. These typologies provide essential ammunition to support efforts and policies aimed at improving adoption by recognizing heterogeneities in the targeted populations. In addition, we conclude that the multivariate analysis provides useful tools suitable for identifying the important socioeconomic characteristics of households influential in determining adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices.