Dynamics of adopting conservation agriculture in family farms: from technique to innovative process

Conservation agriculture (CA) is still not commonly used in family farms in the South despite significant investments in research and development. This article, based on a non-exhaustive scientific literature review and the articles presented in this special issue, explains the low adoption rate of CA due to implementation difficulties by farmers. It also highlights the methodological difficulties of assessing CA performances, both ex post, by the analysis of farming practices, or ex ante, with simulation tools. Farmers rarely adopt these cropping systems without adapting them for their own needs, rooms for manoeuvre and investment capacities. They tend to choose cover crops if they can be used for fodder. Prospects for research and action to develop CA, and more broadly agroecology, include (i) designing cropping systems using fewer chemicals, particularly herbicides, (ii) acting collectively at various levels, (iii) acknowledging social dynamics induced by the emergence of new technologies and (iv) finding methods to help the farmers.