Farm households’ adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices: empirical evidence from Seychelles

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) can improve the resilience of farming systems in the face of climate-related shocks, providing a win–win for food security and environmental protection. Despite such promising benefits, its level of adoption, as well as the drivers of adoption, are still not well understood due to insufficient scholarship in this domain. This study assesses the determinants of the adoption of five CSA practices among 247 randomly selected farmers across five agricultural zones in Seychelles. A multivariate probit model was used to evaluate the determinants of adoption, allowing for the examination of synergies and trade-offs between the CSA practices. These practices include crop and livestock diversity, agroforestry, irrigation, and shade houses. Though the adoption rate varied, all farmers have adopted at least one of five CSA practices. The level of adoption of shade houses was low at 18.2%, while crop diversity recorded a high of 92.7%. Some practices, such as agroforestry and livestock diversity, irrigation, and crop diversity, and the use of shade houses and irrigation, complemented each other. Trade-offs were observed between irrigation and livestock diversity. The number of years of schooling, household size, and resources such as land tenure, farm size, use of hired labor, livestock, and nature of farmland, and farm location were crucial drivers of the adoption of CSA practices among the surveyed farmers. Agricultural strategies should recognize the complementarity of CSA practices to enhance its intensity of adoption in Seychelles. We recommend re-evaluating the current CSA technologies and identifying new technologies to ensure optimal production in an island state with a limited land area.