Contestations and Conflicting Lifeworlds in Conservation Farming Practices in Zimbabwe: The Experiences of Peasant Smallholder Farmers in Chivi South District in Masvingo

Abstract

This study builds on earlier research done by the researchers in Chivi South district on the impact of conservation farming on food security. The major focus of this study however is on the conflicts and contradictions embedded in conservation farming owing to differential perceptions and life-worlds and implications thereof on sustainable agriculture. It contends that these diverging and conflicting life-words are counter-productive and inimical to the goal of sustainable development in general and sustainable agriculture in particular. The treatise argues that unless and until an interface analysis is implemented to try and sever the impasse, conservation farming just like the preceding farming intervention programs proffered by the state and non-state state actors as the panacea to the incessant food insecurity quagmires bedeviling perennially drought-prone regions will be rendered obsolete. Findings in this study reveal that the conservation farming project is shrouded in perpetual conflicts and struggles pitting several stakeholders involved in the program. The study was grounded in qualitative methodology and adopted unstructured interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), and expert interviews as the main data-gathering techniques. Norman Long’s Actor Oriented Approach (AOA) was the theoretical lens used in the research as the major analytical framework to understand and bridge the impasse for conservation farming to have meaning to the stakeholders and leave up to its hype in rural development.