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Scaling Up Conservation Agriculture in Zambia - GCP/ZAM/074/EC

Year of publication 2020

Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

Pages 2

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Project

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) The agriculture sector is crucial to the economy and rural livelihoods in Zambia. Over the years, decreasing crop production and productivity have contributed to food insecurity, especially in rural areas, where poverty remains prevalent among small scale farmers. Poor agricultural management practices and extensive conventional farming have also led to soil loss and degradation and an inability to meet national food production requirements. To combat this, Conservation Agriculture (CA) practices have increasingly been introduced to help address environmental issues and increase yields by making more efficient use of inputs and reducing labour requirements. As such, the Conservation Agriculture Scaling Up (CASU) project aimed to address these issues by providing input support at community levels and improving the capacity of government staff for extension delivery.

Language English

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    Final Evaluation of the Conservation Agriculture Scaling-Up (CASU) Project Funded by the European Union (GCP/ZAM/074/EC)) - Annex 2. Household-level impact assessment survey
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    Despite widespread promotion of conservation agriculture in Zambia as a means to increase productivity and conserve soil fertility in farming systems, there has been limited adoption by farmers of such techniques. In an effort to address this, the Conservation Agriculture Scaling-Up (CASU) Project, funded by the European Union, had the objective of sustainably increasing crop productivity and diversity through widespread promotion of the three principles of conservation agriculture across the entire country, targeting over 300 000 smallholder farmers. The evaluation found that conservation agriculture led to an increase in yields, but farmers struggled to find suitable markets, particularly for legumes. The evaluation recommends that future projects consider the entirety of the value chain, with more flexibility for locally-adapted climate-smart agriculture and sustainable intensification techniques. Further, the evaluation recommends that future projects increase the quota targets for female beneficiaries, while simultaneously including targeted activities for female beneficiaries. The handover to the Government of the Republic of Zambia of the Zambia Integrated Agricultural Management Information System (ZIAMIS) and e-voucher system, derived from the CASU model, was an unplanned but very positive outcome.
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    This impact evaluation report quantifies the impacts of Zambia’s Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme – one of the country’s biggest social protection programmes – and the Conservation Agriculture Scale Up (CASU) project, both alone and in combination with each other. The report looks at how the programmes affected farm production and other livelihoods, the food security situation of the household and of school-going children and the educational outcomes of the latter. The report concludes that each programme or programme component considered in isolation meets their strictly defined objectives, but their combination leads to unintended conflicting influence on certain outcomes, thus highlighting the need for increased coherence between programmes. The household and community surveys for the evaluation of the programmes took place between October 2017 and January 2018. The total sample size is 3 636 households and a total of 72 community interviews were also conducted.
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    This in-depth qualitative study in Zambia is integral to a mixed method impact evaluation of the Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) and the Conservation Agriculture Scale Up (CASU) programmes. Zambia’s HGSF (launched in 2011, and institutionalized in 2012, by the Government of Zambia in collaboration with the World Food Programme, WFP) provides nutritious cooked meals to almost one million schoolchildren and WFP’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) programme procures the commodities that make up the school meals provided by HGSF. P4P aims to improve livelihoods and address food insecurity by expanding local market opportunities for smallholder farmers in rural areas. The CASU programme (implemented between 2013 and late 2017 by FAO) aimed to provide solutions to declining crop production among small- and medium-scale farmers, strengthen partnership and networking between the Zambian government and cooperating partners, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the private sector, and reduce hunger, improve food security and income by increasing crop production, diversification and productivity. The aim of the qualitative study is to contextualise the findings of a quantitative impact evaluation conducted between October 2017 and January 2018, and deepen understanding of how and why specific findings and impacts transpired.
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