The adoption of Sustainable Agricultural Practices (SAPs) remains high on the policy and research agenda in most of sub-Saharan Africa. This paper adopts an integrative approach to investigate how psycho-social and socioeconomic factors influence the uptake of SAPs by smallholder farmers in Ethiopian Highlands. The study applies the Theory of Planned Behavior theoretical framework, as well as the Ordered Probit model and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to model farmers' adoption decisions. The results show that socioeconomic factors such as access to agricultural loans and off-farm income, household labor availability and livestock ownership increase the probability of adopting two or more SAPs. The results further show that farmers' intentions and personal norms significantly influence the number of SAPs adopted at farm-level. These results imply that efforts to promote the widespread adoption of SAPs by smallholder farmers should focus on enhancing farmers' access to agricultural loans and off-farm income, through increased integration into the non-farm rural economy and addressing liquidity constraints through affordable rural financing schemes. The adoption of SAPs can further be enhanced by raising farmers' general awareness and knowledge to change their perceptions and attitudes towards sustainable farming practices.

Smallholder farming systems are highly diverse, owing to differences in farmers’ resource endowments, levels of technology use, degree of market access and agro-ecological factors. Consequently, the prospects of achieving sustainable intensification of smallholder farming systems need to be examined vis-à-vis the dominant farmer typologies, so as to help craft effective and tailored interventions. The objective of this paper is to develop a methodology to establish farm typologies prevalent within the smallholder farming systems and infer their implications for the drive to achieve sustainable intensification of agriculture. A cross-sectional survey was carried out, covering 600 households in four regions of Ethiopia’s Highlands. Multivariate statistical techniques of Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Cluster Analysis (CA) were used to group farmers into four distinct clusters. The study then compared relative levels of agricultural intensification and sustainability across the different typology clusters. The study found that households who are more commercially oriented and have larger landholdings, higher levels of productive assets and livestock ownership, exhibit higher levels of both agricultural intensification and relative sustainability. The study concludes that the farm typology approach has important policy application as it helps identify the set of socioeconomic characteristics of farmers that influence their propensity to achieve sustainable intensification.

This paper explores the sustainable intensification possibilities facing smallholder farmers in Ethiopia. We examine the internal consistency of jointly achieving “sustainable” “intensification” by exploring the factors that lead to complementarity or tradeoffs in the outcomes. A cross-sectional survey of farms was examined in multiple regions of Ethiopia’s Highlands. The results show that some farmers can achieve both sustainability and intensification, while many do not, or cannot achieve both at the same time. We found that some actions have a common impact on both sustainability and intensification, while other factors only affect one outcome. Access to agricultural loans and farm mechanization significantly increases the likelihood of succeeding in sustainable intensification. Access to land will be critical for agricultural sustainability while access to farming information and technical services will drive agricultural intensification. Overall, opportunities to improve both sustainability and intensification are weak, but the opportunity to improve one without sacrificing the other are realistic. The results contribute to the ongoing debate on sustainable intensification and help policy makers explore alternatives for managing different intensification and sustainability scenarios to achieve agricultural development goals.

Tobacco has been central to the agrarian economy of Zimbabwe since the early 1900s, when it became the backbone of the new settler economy following colonisation. Since the land reform of 2000, tobacco has taken on a new impetus, with production now often exceeding that generated by white commercial farming in the 1990s. Today, tobacco is being produced predominantly by smallholders, with those on resettlement land being especially important. Tobacco production is supported by a range of buying companies, auction houses, transporters and contract arrangements, and small-scale farmers are thus tightly connected to a global commodity chain. This article explores tobacco production in A1 (smallholder) resettlement schemes in Mvurwi area, Mazowe district, a high-potential area to the north of Harare. The article is based on a combination of surveys and in-depth interviews with farmers carried out between 2017 and 2019. The article explores who are the winners and losers in the changing dynamics of smallholder tobacco production in these land reform sites and how different groups of farmers combine tobacco with other crops and with off-farm enterprises. Drawing on a simple typology of producers derived from the analysis of survey data from 310 A1 farmers, we examine the role of tobacco in complex patterns of accumulation and social differentiation, looking at class, gender and age dynamics. The conclusion discusses how the tobacco boom is reshaping the agrarian economy and its underlying social relations. This is a highly dynamic setting, influenced by how tobacco production is incorporated into farming systems, how its production is financed, how and where it is marketed and how it is combined with other crops and other income-earning opportunities.

The 2021 UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) awakened the world to the critical need for food systems transformation. Several commitments were made during the summit, with the UN Secretary-General reiterating the need to support national mechanisms that develop and implement national pathways to 2030 that are inclusive and consistent with countries’ climate commitments, building upon the national food systems dialogues. Much of the discussion in the post-summit era has mostly been high level and focused on how countries can be supported to transform pathways into strategies and to design and operationalise investment plans aimed at fostering sustainable and inclusive food systems transformation. However, what has been missing in these discussions is what the envisaged transformation means for the smallholder farmer, and what it takes for smallholder farmers to embrace the transformative agenda and transition to more sustainable methods of production. In this article, reference is made to two of the Five Action Tracks, namely Action Track 3 (boost nature-based solutions) and Action Track 5 (build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stresses), whose central themes are anchored around resilience and sustainability. The paper discusses the underpinnings of nature-positive production systems and explores how these systems interface with smallholder farmers’ circumstances and production goals, and how this might affect implementation of the envisaged practices at the farm level. The central argument in this article is that discussions around food systems transformation must include the smallholder farmers, their lived experiences, socio-economic circumstances, aspirations and production goals.