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Soil (Soil erosion (Wind erosion (bout two million hectares of cropland on…

- - - - In an effort to replicate the reported CA beneficial effects and arrest high soil degradation rates, CA has been promoted in many sub-Saharan countries, including South Africa. For instance, the Eastern Cape provincial government came up with conditional input schemes such as the Massive Food Production (MFP) and Land Care (LC) programmes [11] as strategies to promote the CA technology within the smallholder farming sector in the province.
      - However, like in many African smallholder settings, adoption of CA in the Eastern Cape appears to be minimal, despite the fact that the province is one of the worst affected by soil erosion and degradation [12,13]. It is estimated that only 0.3% of the total area under CA globally is found in Africa, mostly in the commercial farming sector [12].
      - Farmers’ misconceptions about CA and poor transmission of information to the farmers are major limiting factors to its practise
      - 10]. Limited financial means is also a major hindrance to the practise of CA as it dictates the ability to acquire no-till farm equipment and external inputs. Conservation agriculture relies heavily on herbicides for weed control. These are often costly and out of reach for the majority of the resource-constrained farmers. More often than not, smallholder farmers find themselves battling with weed control under CA [16]. Therefore, adoption of CA components is likely to be dependent on the prevailing conditions at each farm affecting production
      - . The observed over-reliance on government grants as opposed to farming by the farmers could possibly reduce the willingness of farmers to be involved in agriculture activities at a commercial scale. Added incentives in the form of inputs and agriculture grants could be explored as a way of motivating smallholder farmers to adopt CA components [11,12].
      - Farmers’ level of education, access to CA training, and grazing land were the more important determining factors with respect to the adoption of CA components by the Eastern Cape smallholder farmers. Residue retention and crop rotations were the most limiting components to comprehensive CA adoption due to several factors, with chief components amongst them being livestock interference and lack of appropriate CA equipment and training. Conservation agriculture, as presently practised by the Eastern Cape farmers did not result in any significant benefit to soil quality compared to the conventional farming method. However, this is likely to change if there is improvement in the adoption of CA components.
      - Input programmes by the government and private organisation is another potential way of boosting CA practice by the smallholder farmers. This can be observed from the large numbers of the same farmers mentioning free inputs as a motivating factor. While the provision of inputs may not necessarily lead to the adoption of CA, the farmers may eventually practise CA using their resources if they are able to see the benefit thereof. The majority of the farmers indicated that weeding was the main contributor to increased labour requirements under CA; however, other studies suggest that the labour increase may be off-set by the reduced land preparation costs associated with no-till farming [24]. The farmers’ inability to control weeds suggests the need to increase access to herbicides by the farmers and promote other cultural means of weed control such as early planting and crop intensification, particularly during the early CA adoption stages where weeds may be a problem.
- - - - http://agroeco.org/doc/ecolrolebiodiv.pdf BIODIVERSITY IS NB AS BIOLOGICAL ES are main ES
- - - - Additionally for sustainable land use management, evaluation of the legislative environment is noted as a key challenge to overcome. Following the terms of Section 24 of the NEMA, Environmental managment frameworks (EMF) it is suggested that through the Land Use Management Bill EMFs are integrated into SDFs. This is so that land use patterns may be informed by spatial plans which are informed by environmental considerations. Notably legislative guidance and background are again the stem of lack of comprehensive and cohesive practise in land use choices (CITE DELIVERY AGREEMENT)
        
        https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/outcome-10-delivery-agreement-23-september20101.pdf