Factors Influencing Adoption of Conservation Agriculture: A Case for Increasing Resilience to Climate Change and Variability in Swaziland

Abstract

Conservation agriculture technologies have been extensively promoted to mitigate against drought as well as improve agriculture productivity for over a decade. Despite the extensive extension and investment Conservation agriculture technologies have been less widely adopted by farmers in Swaziland. Low adoption and lack of continued use of adapted and improved agricultural production technologies amongst farmers has been identified as one of the main reasons for the low agricultural productivity in the country. There is no in-depth analysis of the determinants of Conservation agriculture adoption, this study therefore assessed factors that influenced adoption and continued use of conservation agriculture in the Lowveld agro ecological region of Swaziland Results from 200 farming households practicing conservation agriculture indicated farmer characteristics such as age, gender, levels of education, extension and wealth influence adoption of Conservation agriculture. Likewise, the linear regression model results show that if the household head had some form of education, there were three times more likely to adopt conservation agriculture than a household head without any form of education. As the number of people contributing to agricultural labour increased households there was a 165% chance that these households were more likely to adopt conservation agriculture. Knowing factors that influence adoption will allow development of strategies, policies and plans that take advantage if the main influences of adoption so as to increase adoption and sustainability of use of Conservation agriculture.

Keywords: Conservation Agriculture, Technology adoption, Extension, Climate change, Resilience