Assessing the Sustainability of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) through Conservation Agriculture in Zimbabwe: A Multi Case Study Approach

A transition to Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) is an obligatory task to ensure food security for an anticipated nine billion people by 2050. Despite the significance that CSA through conservation agriculture (CA) in particular received, there has been an increase in disenchantment with the approach due to its intangible rigour. The sustainability of CSA remains shrouded in mystery. CA sustainability among smallholder communal farmers has remained untheorised. It is against this backdrop that the paper sought to assess the sustainability of CSA through Conservation farming by smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe through a cross-country multi-case study approach. This paper highlighted the limiting factors of agricultural production in Zimbabwe and critically examines conservation agriculture as a potential solution to address many of these challenges. The various dimensions of CA were examined to understand the factors that influence the spread of the technology across spatial and temporal contexts. The paper concluded that CA excludes marginal groups like child-headed households, widows and the chronically ill. Environmentally, CSA minimizes adverse externalities, preserves soils with favourable micro-climatic effects, and sequesters an amount of carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, thereby mitigating temperature changes. Therefore, CSA is environmentally sustainable but economically, institutionally and socially compromised. This study contributes to social science scholarship by addressing a theoretical gap in the sustainability of CA practice, especially among smallholder farmers, bringing to the fore inclusivity, social exclusion and multidimensionality in CSA practice and providing a nuanced, evidence-based comparative critique. Keywords: Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA), Conservation Agriculture (CA), Conservation, Sustainability