Abstract:
Conservation agriculture (CA) has been widely promoted in Zimbabwe as an antidote to non-viable
agricultural production and continual land degradation. However, the adoption process had been quite
slow and has not yet entered into the exponential uptake phase. This study aimed at identifying factors
that influence the level of adoption of CA components. A cluster analysis from results of a household
survey administered to 146 households in Muzvezve II, Kadoma District, Zimbabwe identified five
dominant CA strategies (clusters) practiced by cotton growing farmers. A multinomial logit model
revealed that the choice of CA components adopted is positively influenced by farmer’s age, formal
education, access to extension services, labour, animal draught power availability and land size. The
empirical results suggests that, to promote adoption of a complete package of CA policies that increase
access to formal education and extension of CA should make strategic intervention through innovative
methods of farmer to farmer extension services. Promotion of longer-term and effective CA can only be
accomplished through targeting young educated farmers. It is of paramount importance as well to
address the main factors leading to non-adoption and slow adoption such as labour and animal draught
power availability.
