Overview
The project aimed to identify the research gaps and potential partners for future funding on conservation agriculture (CA) adoption in Uganda, with a focus on crop-livestock interactions. CA is a set of practices that can improve soil health, water use efficiency, and productivity in smallholder systems. Still, it faces challenges such as input quality and availability, weed and pest management, labour costs, and trade-offs between crop residues and livestock feed.
The project found high awareness and adoption of some CA practices in the target regions, especially among farmers exposed to previous CA initiatives such as SIMLESA. However, there were also cases of disadoption and modification of some practices due to various biophysical and socio-economic challenges. The project identified several research gaps and opportunities to address these challenges and enable sustained and scaled adoption of CA, such as soil fertility management, crop-livestock integration, weed and disease control, input supply and quality, mechanisation, and policy support.
The project recommended two divergent streams of research for the future: one to scale-out the adoption of CA practices in new regions with appropriate agroecologies, and one to improve the long-term adoption of CA practices in farming communities where some practice change has already occurred. The project also suggested using the existing network of scientists and organisations built during SIMLESA to deliver the future research, and to involve farmers and other stakeholders in the research process.
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