Why are there still barriers in Adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture by the Smallholder Farmers?

Many technologies of importance to farmers, including climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices, have predominantly been developed by agricultural research and other seed companies, and are disseminated through agricultural extension system. However, these technologies do not always reach all farmers, particularly, women farmers who are normally marginalized on agricultural extension services. Even those that reach down to the farmers, they are not always accepted and adopted, resulting in the farmers failure to fully benefit from modern technologies that have been developed to respond to negative impacts of climate change on food production.

Secondly, farmers tend to accept and adopt technologies and innovations when they see the benefits themselves. And for them to easily see those benefits, they must participate in the; trial, testing, evaluation and validation of the technologies and techniques.  Additionally, the local farmers continually experiment and innovate independently of the formal scientific research, though their innovations may not be adequately documented. It is because of such multiple problems that a study was designed to investigate the participation of innovative women farmers in Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Practices in Kabudula in Lilongwe-Malawi.