There is an opportunity, and an urgent need, for transformational change of the current farming systems in South Pacific Island countries (SPIC) to improve soil security, and therefore food, nutrition and income security, and to better adapt to climate change. Tillage-based systems are dominant across some SPIC and reliance on tillage may increase if the use of broad-spectrum herbicides is banned. Increased reliance on tillage, or its inappropriate use in fragile soils, may exacerbate soil degradation processes and lead to increased food insecurity in the region. A potential solution to addressing these problems is conservation agriculture (CA), a regenerative and sustainable farming system that promotes minimum soil disturbance, the maintenance of permanent soil cover and diversification of crop species, and soil conservation. The drivers for and barriers against uptake of CA in SPIC are not fully understood nor are they well documented, which makes it difficult for policymakers to devise effective measures and implement strategies for increased adoption. A conceptual framework to represent CA adoption in the SPIC context is proposed. The framework combined the ADOPT modelling tool (which predicted the time taken to adopt CA and the peak adoption level) with a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis (which synthetised present state and future potential based on expert knowledge and a literature review of CA). ADOPT modelling predicted that 45% peak adoption of CA would be reached after 23 years; however, removing key barriers to adoption could increase uptake to 62% and accelerate it by 13.2 years, reducing the timeframe to fewer than 10 years. Hence, the importance of developing policymakers and leaders’ awareness and understanding of the benefits of CA to facilitate capacity building and drive CA adoption. The developed framework can be tailored for specific target audiences, including policymakers, and research and extension officers, to inform a pathway for long-term CA adoption.
Juttner-Melland et al. (Thu,) studied this question.