Low-Input Agricultural Technologies for Sub-Saharan Africa

The authors discuss low-input agricultural strategies known and practised by many subsistence and smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, which are efficient and intensify food production. Their proposed technologies are suitable options useable in response to concerns about the environmental impact made by using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Therefore, new agricultural technologies should be used in order to avoid land degradation but rather improve soil through appropriate conservation practices. With the help of these new low-input strategies, the exploitation of land leading to massive destruction, and as such to rural poverty, can be avoided. Field tests have shown that the low-input agricultural strategies are economically affordable to poor farmers and easy to implement.