Conservation agriculture in Tanzania
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Date
2017
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Publisher
Springer International Publishing Switzerland
Abstract
Conservation agriculture is promoted to increase crop production and
environmental sustainability. It is proposed to be a solution for the problem of poor
agricultural yields and soil degradation in most Sub-Saharan African countries.
Conservation agriculture is among the climate-smart practices recommended in
Tanzania to curb the impacts caused by climate change. It involve the use of organic
soil management practices such as reduced tillage, mulching and leguminous crops.
Agroecosystems such as agroforesty, soil organic fertilization and better crop rotation
are also included. This chapter reviews the adoption trends of conservation
agriculture in Tanzania and their implications to both socio-economic and environmental
benefits. We found that the adoption of conservation agricultural practices
has spatial and temporal variations. For example in Arusha, farmers use mainly
terraces while in Dodoma they use conservational tillage. The ‘Matengo pits’ and
terraces in the Ruvuma Region have improved both maize and coffee production. In
the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor (SAGCOT) planting basins have doubled
maize yields compared to that of conventional tillage. In areas with irrigation
potentials, conservation agriculture has increased crop yields in drought ecosystems
over time. In the northern part of Tanzania the adoption of conservation agriculture
has increased the production of food crop crops from an average of 0.5 ton ha−1 to
1.5 ton ha−1. Subsequently, maize yields have increased from 12,000 kg to 20,000 kg
per 4.8 hectares and 3.75 t per hectare when intercropped with lablab. The interest
in adopting conservation agriculture has been driven by its ability to enable someyields even in poor rainfall scenario. The review focused on the existing farming
management, principles and benefits of conservation agriculture to farmers, society
and environment as well as its challenges facing this system.
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Keywords
Climate change, Semi-arid, Agroforestry, Organic fertilization, Planting basins, Terraces, Environmental services, Food security, Crop yields, Tanzania