Conservation Agriculture (CA) is a management system that focuses on supporting soil health by minimizing tillage, maintaining soil cover, and increasing cropping system diversity. System- driven management practices such as CA have shown a variety of benefits to farmers via increased yields, reduced labor requirements, improving soil fertility, increasing water holding capacity and reducing erosion. The viability of CA depends on factors such as farmer socioeconomic circumstances, characteristics of soil and farm health, as well as access to inputs, appropriate crops for cropping systems and appropriate training and extension opportunities. If CA is to have impact at scale, overcoming barriers to CA adoption and understanding the challenges and circumstances for adoption in different contexts must be a prime focus for extension and development efforts.

Although CA has received wide research and extension support throughout Sub Saharan Africa, there is still a dearth in overall adoption of CA practices. Often without continuous evaluations of program impact, extension and research fails to translate and adapt agriculture technologies to farmers specific contexts and conditions, such as their environments, resources, and knowledge of new technologies. Program evaluations can be useful for providing feedback to extension organizations. Qualitative methods such as focus groups and surveys can provide insight into challenges farmers experiences, as well as insight into attitudes and knowledge, all of which can be used to improve program development, and therefore adoption of new technologies. Working in collaboration with a local organization, The Howard Buffet Center for No till Agriculture (CNTA), my goal was to assess small holder farmer adoption potential of CA technology.

Stakeholder Roles
CNTA is a local NGO that promotes conservation agriculture practices to small holder farmers throughout Ghana. CNTA offers short-term training programs to groups of farmers, students, development agencies, and other extension personnel. During these training programs, participants learn the principles of CA, how to implement CA, along with a tour of the centers research fields presenting CA demonstration plots with different cropping systems. CNTA also conducts outreach and extension programs with communities for longer periods of time. Extension personnel trained in CA application are placed in equipment facilities to serve communities and support growers in adopting conservation agriculture practices. I first began working with CNTA while serving in the Peace Corps prior to starting the International Agriculture Development program at UC Davis.

 

COVID Impact
As a returned Peace Corps volunteer, I had planned to conduct my masters research in the community I served for two years. This research aimed to conduct participatory farmer field trials, assessing CA feasibility, as well as short term impact on weeds, yield, soil moisture, and adoption potential of CA practices. However due to COVID, I, like so many others, was unable to travel and had to readjust my research plan. Being that travel was restricted, I changed the research goals to focus on understanding CA benefits and barriers to adoption alone.

 

Project Objectives
With the aim of improving local extension approaches, project objectives evaluated farmers adoption after they received short-term and long-term training and support services from CNTA. To achieve short-term adoption potential, ex-ante surveys were developed to evaluate knowledge, attitude, and perceptions of CA with four incoming training groups. Focus groups were used to evaluate long-term adoption in three communities. These communities have been receiving extension support from CA advisors for more than two years. The focus groups helped us understand farmers experiences and perceptions on the benefits and challenges of CA. Combined results from the surveys and focus groups are being used to inform CNTA of the barriers and opportunities for CA adoption within the represented three separate regions of Ghana in order to improve their training programs, and address some of the key challenges growers face for adopting CA. CNTA employees implemented surveys and focus groups, while I developed questionnaires, oversaw data analysis and project development, with input from UC Davis faculty.

 

Methods
The surveys were a collection of rating questions which ranked statements based on how much participants agreed or disagreed. Ranking systems were between 0 and 7, with 7 being ‘completely agree’ and 0 being ‘completely disagree’. These types of Likert scale surveys are useful in evaluating changes in knowledge gained as well as evaluating how people think and know if farmers were gaining knowledge from the training programs, were optimistic about CA, and if they believed they had adequate resources and environments for CA to work for their farms and communities.

To assess long term adoption potential, CNTA employees organized focus groups within different communities. Questions focused on farmers experiences with CA, challenges they were facing with these practices, and how CA was benefiting them and their communities. Three regions were chosen based on climatic and socioeconomic differences: The Ashanti region, the Upper West region, and the Brong-Ahafo Region. While the upper West region is a mono-modal rain pattern (one rainy season), the Ashanti region is considered a forested zone receiving bimodal rains (two rainy seasons), and Brong-Ahafo borders between the northern savanna zone and the transitional forested zone. In all three regions, rains are becoming increasingly variable with climate change. Crop yields in these municipality are facing a decline in production in the past 5-10 years, causing economic and food security concerns.

 

Analysis and Outcomes
Unfortunately, due to project delays from COVID, outcomes have not yet been finalized. Currently analysis is happening using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Qualitative coding software (Nvivo 12) is being used to code the transcribed focus groups and uncover 

common themes and patterns relating to the challenges and benefits of CA. Preliminary results suggest that barriers to adoption are different depending on region. While in the southern regions CA implementation is more feasible due to higher vegetative growth, allowing for increased soil cover, northern regions deal with dryer climates and find soil cover to be a major issue.  However, in the southern regions, the growers expressed challenges in the beginning stages of adoption around higher pest pressure and more labor demands.

In terms of the short-term adoption analysis, we are evaluating how growers’ responses to questions change before the training occurs and after. Preliminary results show that knowledge is increasing substantially based on an average increase in grower ratings. Perceptions and attitudes on CA are appearing to increase as well, although not substantially. This may indicate that participants are not able to connect what they are learning at the training directly to the context in which they farm.  Further analysis is needed for both focus group responses and surveys to make sufficient conclusions. However, based on the findings, we will be able to provide recommendations to CNTA. By understanding the challenges for adoption, they can develop tools to support uptake better, and adapt curriculum.

Lessons Learned
The most important lessons I learned through this project was project management and flexibility. This project was unable to be executed as expected and because of that I had to reinvent my role and other partners as well. I was not able to be in the field and conduct the interview and focus group activities myself. However, by delegating and working closely with the partnering group, we were still able to follow through with these activities effectively. I also was able to gain experience in questionnaire development and qualitative study analysis. CNTA is looking forward to learning from these outcomes to improve their training and extension services. Being able to make impact remotely was not something I originally felt excited about nor thought was possible, however this project changed my perspective. There are creative and effective ways to work across long distances. Developing partnerships and creating effective yet simple objectives were essential to conduct meaningful work through the COVID pandemic.

I would like to acknowledge Jastro, for providing the funding for this project. Funding was used to support CNTA employee time and travel between communities to conduct focus groups, material development and purchasing recording devices to record focus groups. Some funds were also used for living expenses for some duration of COVID pandemic restrictions.

 

I would also like to acknowledge CNTA employees for being excellent at implementing project activities. Most importantly I would like to acknowledge the farmers who participated and gave their time to the focus groups and surveys.