Farmers are taking tentative steps to embrace climate smart agriculture

Farai Mabeza
RURAL farmers are taking tentative steps to embrace climate smart agriculture (CSA) to combat changing weather patterns and declining soil nutrients.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, CSA is an integrative approach to address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change as the unforgiving and unfamiliar climatic conditions sweep across the country.
In Murewa, for instance, farmers look despondently to the sky for the slightest hint of rain as temperatures soar as early as 0900 hours in early December, once upon a time a month of plenty rainfall.
Early planted maize, the major crop grown here, is in need of rain two weeks after the last rains fell in the area. Those engaged in CSA are hopeful that their crop will make it to the next rains because the troughs they dug for their maize still contain moisture.
Justice Nyamangara from the Chinhoyi University of Technology School of Agriculture Sciences and Technology believes that one of the main problems for communal farmers when it comes to conservation agriculture (CA), practiced under CSA, is that it is labour intensive.
Most farmers cannot prepare large plots because of physical limitations that come with digging planting basins using hoes.
“In some areas they refer to CA as ‘dig and die’ because it requires a lot of work. Farmers without fenced plots cannot start digging early because free roaming animals disturb early prepared basins. Crusting soils also offer a challenge and when herbicides are not used for various reasons the labour demand goes higher,” Nyamangara said.
This challenge is acknowledged by the farmers themselves.
Most of the farmers in Murewa practising CA are only doing so on smaller plots of their land, while the rest is under conventional farming methods.
With so much knowledge and information available Nyamangara said there was need for training of both farmers and extension workers.
“CA does not work everywhere. Proper targeting is required. Farmers are rationale and many adopt some and not all CA principles depending on their particular circumstances,” he said.
But Onias Taruvinga, chairman of a group of farmers from Murewa’s Chemhondoro Primary School community in the district, believes that farmers do not have any other choice but to embrace conservation agriculture even with its challenges.
“Because of the high labour demands we urge farmers who are incapacitated in one way or another to do what is within their physical means. With 2 000 hand dug basins one can reap up to a tonne of maize. Same sized land under conventional means comes nowhere near that,” he said.
Taruvinga points to the decreased rainfall being received in his area as a driving factor for a change in farming methods.
“The rainfall season is now clearly shorter. In the past we used to have rains for four months, but now it is down to just three months,” he said.
Where labour is available the benefits of CA are substantial.
The headmaster at Murewa’s Chemhondoro School, Abraham Nyandoro, noted that CA has helped the school feed Early Childhood Development (ECD) and orphaned pupils.
“We started conservation agriculture in 2012 with our pupils under the young farmers club. The idea is to catch them young and train them. We feed the ECD children and we also have 500 orphans out of a total of 2 000 pupils on the same feeding scheme. These have all benefited from the boost we have had in our yields,” Nyandoro said.
“Our soil is old and tired. With conventional methods you cannot yield anything.”
Ronald Tirivavi, a scientific officer in charge of agronomy at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, believes that CSA can succeed by meeting the individual needs of specific areas.
“CSA is not a single specific agricultural technology or practice that can be universally applied. CSA aims to improve food security, help communities adapt to climate change and contribute to climate change mitigation by adopting appropriate practices. It requires site-specific assessments to identify suitable practices,” he said.
Tirivavi recommended an action plan involving mapping of adaptation activities at both national and household level, awareness raising through engagement with media and suitable, targeted campaigns such as public awareness activities (schools, non-governmental organisations and government) and fundraising to enable implementation of the adaptation strategies.
Joyce MulilaMitti, plant production and protection officer at the Food and Agriculture Organisation sub-regional office in Harare, identified major areas of work on CSA for both governments and development agencies.
“These are, inclusion of the agricultural sectors and the CSA approach in mid- to long-term development planning, creating an enabling policy, financial and enabling environment and technical support and capacity development of key institutions and organisations to enable implementation of locally appropriate climate-smart production systems,” she said.
MulilaMitti said other areas of emphasis included landscape and ecosystem management, management of farms, crops, livestock, aquaculture and fisheries, sustainable grazing for better livelihood, increasing adaptive capacity of farmers and the gender dimensions of climate change and agriculture.
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