This paper contributes to literature on agricultural technology adoption by using a novel data set that combines data from two large-scale household surveys with historical rainfall data to understand the determinants and the intensity of adoption of Conservation Farming (CF) practices in Zambia. Conservation agriculture (CA), defined as practicing minimum soil disturbance, cover crops and crop rotation, has the technical potential to contribute to food security and adaptation to climate change. It has been actively promoted in seven of Zambia's nine provinces since the 1980s in the form of CF including planting basins and dry season land preparation in addition to the 3 CA practices. Rigorous analyses of the determinants of adoption/dis-adoption of these practices, however, are still scarce. This paper fills this gap using panel data from two rounds of the Supplemental Survey to the Central Statistical Office's 1999/2000 Post Harvest Surveys, which were implemented in 2004 and 2008, as well as (district level) historical rainfall estimate (RFE) data obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center (NOAA-CPC) for the period of 1996-2011. We specifically analyze the adoption and dis-adoption of two main components of CF: minimum soil disturbance and planting basins. Considering that the Eastern Province has historically received the bulk of the CF support activities, we also do our analyses separately for this province to assess the effectiveness of these activities. We document high levels of dis-adoption (around 95%) of these practices in the whole country, while dis-adoption in the Eastern province-the hub of CF projects in Zambia-is significantly lower. Nationwide only 5% of the households practiced minimum soil disturbance/planting basins in 2008, down from 13% in 2004, which raises the question of the widespread suitability of this practice.

We examine a set of potentially climate smart agricultural practices, including reduced tillage, crop rotation and legume intercropping, combined with the use of improved seeds and inorganic fertiliser, for their effects on maize yields in Zambia. We use panel data from the Rural Incomes and Livelihoods Surveys merged with a novel set of climatic variables based on geo‐referenced historical rainfall and temperature data to explore the changing effects of these practices with climatic conditions. We estimate the impacts on maize yields, and also on the exhibition of very low yields and yield shortfalls from average levels, as indicators of resilience, while controlling for household characteristics. We find that minimum soil disturbance and crop rotation have no significant impact on these yield outcomes, but that legume intercropping significantly increases yields and reduces the probability of low yields even under critical weather stress during the growing season. We also find that the average positive impacts of modern input use (seeds and fertilisers) are significantly conditioned by climatic variables. Timely access to fertiliser emerges as one of the most robust determinants of yields and their resilience. These results have policy implications for targeted interventions to improve the productivity and the resilience of smallholder agriculture in Zambia in the face of climate change.

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Shadow prices guide farmers' resource allocations, but for subsistence farmers growing traditional crops, shadow prices may bear little relationship with market prices. We econometrically estimate shadow prices of maize using data from a nationally representative survey of rural households in Mexico. Shadow prices are significantly higher than the market price for traditional but not improved maize varieties. They are particularly high in the indigenous areas of southern and southeastern Mexico, indicating large de facto incentives to maintain traditional maize there.

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