How farmers grow food without burning out their land

Each day, Isaac Muterere rises with the sun in Honde Valley in eastern Zimbabwe to tend his plot, inspecting his plants – a mixture of avocado trees, maize and sunflower growing side by side in the same field.

For generations, farming in this area followed a familiar pattern: many families worked on surrounding estates or practised subsistence agriculture simply to survive. Land was often cleared extensively to increase yields. Over time, this approach led to environmental degradation, depleted soils and low incomes.

Despite the intense labour, returns remained minimal. After each harvest, bananas sell for as little as $ 0.35 per kilogramme and sugar cane for about $ 1 per bundle, transported some 300 kilometres to markets in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, Muterere says. Sooner or later, farmers like him are forced to look for alternatives, particularly as climate pressures intensify and soils lose fertility.

In 2022, the father of five began practising regenerative farming on his 0.5-hectare plot to feed his family and protect the land. He was trained in conservation farming techniques by CICADA, a forestry company and local agricultural training organisation. Conservation or regenerative agriculture is an approach that focuses on restoring soil health rather than exhausting it. Instead of relying on chemical fertilisers, regenerative agriculture uses compost, mulch and crop diversity to improve yields while preserving the ecosystem.

“In regenerative agriculture, we do so – using compost and mulch instead of fertilisers or chemicals – mainly to keep soil organisms alive and reduce diseases and pests,” Muterere says. He now also works as an outreach field officer, supervising and monitoring other new farmers.

“A growing understanding of innovative farming methods”

Regenerative farming is not a brand-new idea. Similar approaches have been practised for years in different parts of the world. Yet in Zimbabwe it is gaining new urgency and beginning to scale as climate change makes traditional farming increasingly risky for smallholder farmers. Regenerative farming aims to produce food with fewer inputs, less labour and greater resilience to droughts. It can be a crucial advantage for smallholder farmers facing climate change, now and in future decades.

At CICADA, training instructor Tilda Sikireta equips farmers like Muterere with these methods. “What we see through training is that farmers begin to rely less on external inputs and more on what their land can sustain. That changes both yields and long-term soil health,” she says. “More youths, including women under the age of 35, are being trained, and there is a growing understanding of climate change and innovative farming methods in general.” 

To date, more than 300 farmers, including women, have been trained, with plans to reach 900 in the coming years. Yet educating about regenerative agriculture in Zimbabwe is not limited to CICADA’s work. It is part of a broader national shift, supported by the government, UN initiatives and local NGOs, which together have already trained tens of thousands of smallholder farmers in climate-resilient, low-input farming practices. 

For Muterere, the changes are becoming visible. This year, he harvested around 200 kilogrammes of maize and 80 kilogrammes of beans from the same plot through intercropping, alongside sunflower. “Since I started practising regenerative agriculture, my yields and income have improved, and I grow more crops in one field, using less labour and fewer inputs,” he says. Environmental scientist and activist Shamiso Mupara, who works with remote communities in Zimbabwe, says that when it comes to regenerative farming, the focus is often only on the benefits for the ecosystems, although there are also a lot of good reasons for farmers themselves to adopt the sustainable methods. “Yes – it improves soil health and increases soil organic matter and fertility,” she says. “But it equally and immediately reduces labour, input costs and the need for pesticides, which is much healthier for the farmers.”

Derick Matsengarwodzi is a freelance journalist in Harare, Zimbabwe. 
derickm01@gmail.com 

This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.