Abstract
In response to climate change, new technologies resilient to climatic variability have been promoted among smallholder farmers. Conservation Agriculture (CA) has been promoted since the 1990s in sub-Saharan Africa. However, as with any new technology, various factors affect adoption and ultimately the impact of the technology. Gender is one such factor. Both female and male smallholder farmers are faced with numerous constraints to accessing productive resources. Female farmers face more problems in adopting new technology than do male farmers, resulting in few of them adopting them. This in turn reduces the impact that these technologies have on their livelihood. Using Zambian nationally representative data, the study examines the gendered impacts of CA on smallholder households’ livelihood outcomes – household income, crop income, crop diversification, and dietary diversity score. Results show that CA adoption improves a household’s level of dietary diversity and crop diversification. However, the impact of CA on these livelihood outcomes reduces if the household is female-headed or the farmer (male or female) is in a female-headed household. Therefore, promotion of CA should take into account the gender differences at household level and within the household, as well as female farmers’ access to productive resources.
Recommended Citation
Zulu-Mbata, Olipa and Chapoto, Antony
(2016)
"Conservation Agriculture: Gendered Impacts on Households' Livelihoods,"
Zambia Social Science Journal: Vol. 6:
No.
2, Article 7.
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/zssj/vol6/iss2/7