CONTEXT: Improved farming practices could contribute to solving food insecurity and poverty among smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe, who are dominantly mixed crop-livestock farmers. Agroecological practices, which rely on the use and recycling of local …
Conservation agriculture (CA) is widely promoted for its potential to support agroecological intensification in sub-Saharan Africa, yet adoption among smallholder farmers remains limited, partly due to the high labour demands of manual and …
Intercropping cereals and legumes may enhance system productivity by simultaneously producing grain for human consumption and crop residues for livestock feed. This study evaluated the effects of maize (Zea mays) intercropped with cowpea (Vigna …
Soil acidity is considered one of the most pressing problems for crop production in Ethiopia. Yet, estimates of the total area of acidic soils, defined here as soils with a pH value below 5.5, and of the proportion of acidic soils affected by …
Balmford and colleagues recently argued that yield maximization and land sparing are key to reducing biodiversity loss. Complementing the response from Beillouin and colleagues, this paper critiques such yield-centred approaches from an agricultural …
Introduction - Forests support crucial ecosystem services globally, and contribute to the livelihoods of millions of people,but are threatened by agricultural expansion and intensification.Yet the relationship between forest cover and agricultural …
Smallholder maize production in sub-Saharan Africa is constrained by soil fertility decline and erratic rainfall, leading to low dietary diversity. A four-season on-farm study (2018/2019–2021/2022) was conducted with six farmers in Murehwa District, …
While conservation agriculture (CA) has been widely evaluated for its biogeochemical effects (e.g soil organic carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions) for climate mitigation, its biogeophysical impacts related to changes in surface albedo …
Acid soils are widespread across sub-Saharan Africa. Agricultural lime can be used to alleviate production constraints associated with soil acidity, but lime is not widely available in the region, and it is unclear if applying it would be profitable. …
There is growing interest in participatory varietal selection and gender-responsive breeding in research and development initiatives. On-farm testing is increasingly used to ensure that new varieties perform within the target environments. However, …