Awareness and Use of Sustainable Land Management Practices in Smallholder Farming Systems

Abstract

Sustainable land management (SLM) practices are often touted as a vehicle for simultaneously increasing agricultural productivity and food security in rural areas. In Eastern Zambia, numerous initiatives such as the Zambia Integrated Forest Landscape Project (ZIFLP) have been implemented. Yet, empirical data suggest relatively low levels of SLM uptake in the smallholder farming sector. Therefore, the broad objective of this study was to estimate the relationship between smallholder farmer awareness of SLM technologies and land allocated to SLM at the farm level. We hypothesized the following: H1: Increased farmer awareness of SLM practices leads to more land allocated to SLM activities in Zambia’s Eastern Province; and H2: Adoption of specific SLM practices influences the extent of land allocated to SLM. Using an intra-household cross-sectional survey, data were collected from 761 randomly selected households from 11 chiefdoms of the Eastern Province. The Heckman selection procedure was used to analyze the study’s overarching hypothesis. Findings showed that farmers were generally conversant with SLM as a construct (>90%), with choices being influenced by gender. Conservation agriculture in the form of crop rotations, use of manure, mixed cropping, tree planting, and minimum tillage methods were the most commonly known SLM technologies among farmers. Findings also indicated that awareness is an important antecedent in the use of SLM practices (χ2 = 76.6, p = 0.00), with greater access to extension being positively associated with farmer awareness (p < 0.05). The land allotted to SLM hinged on crop diversity, ownership of different types of livestock, and access to agricultural extension. These findings suggest that long-term commitments to training farmers in SLM is critical. This will be achieved when there is coherence in the information on SLM being given to farmers by all the actors working in the region.