Food insecurity, financial loss, and a decline in agricultural output are among the significant challenges to the global food chain caused by extreme climatic events, high variability and change, rapid urbanization, and land degradation. Therefore, it is essential to explore alternative, sustainable agricultural practices to meet the growing population’s food needs. Sustainable agriculture is foundational to farm management, rural development, and water conservation. This includes sustainable practices such as crop rotation, intercropping, and planting crops with varying rooting depths to maximize soil moisture absorption, as well as mulching to improve nutrient recycling and enhance productivity in smallholder cropping systems. The adoption of sustainable agricultural practices has become a priority for smallholder farmers, policymakers, extension agents, and agricultural experts to improve agricultural productivity, contribute to food security, and generate income. However, adoption rates have been slow, especially in Southern Africa, due to a lack of access to technology, financial constraints, limited information, and limited knowledge. This review was conducted using a comprehensive literature search on the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices by legume smallholders, examining various factors that contribute to the failure of legume smallholder farmers to adopt new agricultural practices. The timeframe of the reviewed literature was from 2010 to 2024. The results showed that smallholder farmers face numerous challenges, including limited access to technology, inadequate knowledge, and insufficient financial resources. Research conducted by the Water Research Commission (WRC) indicates that commercial farmers have access to technology, and this group of farmers possesses more substantial financial resources compared to smallholder farmers. In the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices. It is essential to strengthen the linkage between researchers, agricultural extension, and legume smallholder farmers to promote sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs). Smallholder farmers must be informed about such interventions and sustainable agricultural practices to improve rural livelihoods and enhance resilience, adaptation, and responsiveness.

Smallholder agriculture plays a crucial role in semi-arid regions such as South Africa, where farmers are often constrained by rainfall variability and limited water availability. In this context, agricultural water management (AWM) plays an important role in supporting smallholder farmers to sustain crop production. Despite the significance of AWM, existing typologies do not adequately capture the diversity of these farmers across different AWM pathways. To capture this diversity, the study aimed to identify a typology of smallholder farmers based on AWM practices across four predefined AWM pathways: rain-fed farming, farmer-led irrigation, smallholder irrigation schemes and wastewater irrigation in the Limpopo and Gauteng provinces. Using a multistage sampling approach supplemented by snowball sampling in Gauteng, primary data were collected from 264 smallholder farmers through face-to-face interviews using a structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and agglomerative hierarchical clustering with average linkage were employed for data analysis. Three distinct farmer types were identified: rainfall-dependent farmer type (42.80%), surface water-based irrigation farmer type (23.11%) and groundwater-based irrigation farmer type (34.09%). The results also revealed an association between the identified farmer types and the four AWM pathways. Rain-fed farmers were concentrated in the rainfall-dependent farmer type. All smallholder irrigation scheme farmers and the majority of wastewater irrigators belonged to the surface water-based irrigation farmer type, whereas most farmer-led irrigators belonged to the groundwater-based irrigation farmer type. Overall, the study provides an empirical basis for understanding diversity in AWM practices and informing the design of context-specific interventions aimed at improving water use efficiency and strengthening agricultural sustainability.