thanks a lot for your interesting comments, which I share in part. While I agree that adoption of Conservation Agriculture (CA) practices is not that simple, available data do not support your statement that adoption is very slow. According to FAO, global annual adoption of CA is in the order of 6 million ha per year, which is not small. I do not know the case of Zambia, but I would be interested to know how you got from Google that "100's of millions of dollars" [are spent to support CA]. In many countries, very little is spent on CA. Actually, subsidies to fuel and regular farm equipment create a disincentive to CA adoption.
I agree that the case for Africa is more complex than in other parts of the world because of several reasons, including lower level of farm mechanization, higher value of crop residues, and small-holders' low capacity to invest. But what does this imply? That investments in soil fertility cannot be effective in some African conditions (and thus they should be discontinued) or that they should be better targeted to address the local specific obstacles so that they can be more effective? I see a lot of difference between the two.
Dear Nancy,
thanks a lot for your interesting comments, which I share in part. While I agree that adoption of Conservation Agriculture (CA) practices is not that simple, available data do not support your statement that adoption is very slow. According to FAO, global annual adoption of CA is in the order of 6 million ha per year, which is not small. I do not know the case of Zambia, but I would be interested to know how you got from Google that "100's of millions of dollars" [are spent to support CA]. In many countries, very little is spent on CA. Actually, subsidies to fuel and regular farm equipment create a disincentive to CA adoption.
I agree that the case for Africa is more complex than in other parts of the world because of several reasons, including lower level of farm mechanization, higher value of crop residues, and small-holders' low capacity to invest. But what does this imply? That investments in soil fertility cannot be effective in some African conditions (and thus they should be discontinued) or that they should be better targeted to address the local specific obstacles so that they can be more effective? I see a lot of difference between the two.
Thanks for the useful conversation,
Maurizio