2011 EC/IFAD CGIAR Programme: Conservation Agriculture and Smallholder Farmers in Eastern and Southern Africa-Leveraging Institutional Innovations and Policies for Sustainable Intensification and Food Security (CASFESA, 2011/260-204). Progress Report (01 June 2012 – 31 January 2013)

Abstract

Conservation Agriculture and Smallholder Farmers in Eastern and Southern Africa-Leveraging Institutional Innovations and Policies for Sustainable Intensification and Foof Security (CASFESA) project is funded by EC-IFAD and implemented by CIMMYT in Ethiopia and Kenya (Eastern Africa), and Malawi (Southern Africa) in collaboration with national partners (Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural research, EIAR, Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute, KARI, and Department of Agricultural Research and Technical Services, DARTS in Malawi). The overall goal of the project is increasing food security and incomes of resource poor smallholder farmers in Eastern and Southern Africa through pro-poor technological and institiutional innovations that improve productivity and enhance the resilience and sustainability of farming system. To systematically assess the role of institutional innovations and technological interventions in enhancing crop productivity and income of resource poor smallholder farmers, we followed a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) where Conservation Agriculture (CA) technologies are demonstrated in randomly selected treatment villages. Farmers in the treatment villages are invited to visit the demonstration plots in their villages and participate in the CA-based technology evaluations compared to their traditional (conventional) practices. With the aim of better adoption of CA-based practices in the treatment villages, in addition to CA-based technology demonstrations, the project facilitates/strengthens institutional and market arrangements that could enhance resource-poor smallholder farmers’ access to CA related inputs like herbicides and farm equipments. In the final CA adoption assessment, farmers in the treatment villages are compared with farmers from counterfactual control villages. Control villages are randomly selected along with the treatment villages when the project implementation starts and left aside with no intervention. This report covers activities conducted during the period of 1st June 2012 to 31st January 2012. During this period, most of the project activities were conducted in Ethiopia. Project implementation in Kenya started late January 2013 where as some field activities are planned in Malawi for the next reporting period. The report is organized as follows. In the next section (section 2), following the project’s logical framework (components and activites), detailed technical reports are given under specific activities where we have conducted some operations. For other activities, the plan is stated. Challenges faced in the operation of the project is stated in sectoion 3. Section 4 gives lessons learned and section 5 puts wayforward.