Conservation agriculture (CA) is a set of practices widely promoted to increase productivity while conserving soil through reduced tillage, mulching and crop rotation. I explore the constraints to CA adoption through in-depth interviews with 18 CA farmers, four dis-adopters and 11 non-adopters in one community where two NGOs have been promoting CA. One NGO promotes the basin method with compost production while the other promotes direct seeding with herbicide use. Though the farmers described many benefits in using CA there was little sign of adoption beyond the plots where NGOs provided inputs. Most farmers were adamant that CA could perform better than conventional agriculture only if they applied fertilizer (or large quantities of compost). This constraint can be explained by the nutrient immobilizing effect caused by both reduced tillage and the retention of mulch. With planting basins, adoption is also constrained by increased labor requirements for land preparation, compost production and weeding. The high input to output price ratio causes CA practices to be unprofitable except on small plots for farmers who have a low opportunity cost of household labor. These findings suggest that CA can improve maize yields but capital and labor constraints limit adoption to small plots in the absence of NGO-provided inputs. Given the current ranges of prices for grain and inputs CA will not be adopted at a large scale in Angonia. Nevertheless, the small CA plots can serve the purpose of reliably providing farmers with high yields where constraints are lowest.
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