Worldwide, climate change is currently recognized as one of the major challenges to increased food production.
The agriculture sector is the main source of livelihoods, growth and foreign exchange earnings in many developing
countries including Zambia. However, it is also a sector that is mostly vulnerable to effects of climate change.
Smallholder farmers in Zambia have been adopting agricultural related adaptation strategies including minimum
tillage and crop rotation to mitigate effects of climate change. There has been contentious debate on whether the
two strategies (that are elements of conservation farming) increase crop yields and incomes. Available literature
heavily relies on biophysical experiments and show contradictions in the ability of these strategies to improve crop
yields. Taking cognizance of the differences in socioeconomic circumstances of the farmers, the purpose of this
study was to estimate the impact of minimum tillage and crop rotation on maize yields and incomes for farmers
adopting the strategies. The study used cross sectional data collected in 2012/13 from 1231 households across six
districts of Zambia and applied propensity score matching techniques and Heckman’s selection estimators to
account for observed and unobserved heterogeneity between the adopters and non-adopters. The results showed
that about 12 and 19% of the farmers have adopted minimum tillage and crop rotation respectively. The strategies
improved on-farm maize productivity by about 26% to 38% for minimum tillage and 21% to 24% for crop rotation.
Minimum tillage also improved total household maize production.