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With increasing food insecurity and climate change, conservation agriculture has emerged as a sustainable alternative to intensive conventional agriculture as a source of food supply. Yet the adoption rate of conservation agriculture is still low. Our paper analyses the factors affecting farmers' willingness to adopt conservation agriculture in Lebanon. The findings show that household characteristics-years of farming and farm size affect conservation agriculture adoption. However, household characteristics alone were insufficient to explain conservation agriculture adoption. We found that farming experience, information sources, frequency of irrigation, and severity of weed infestation in the past, participation in specific trainings, and farmers' perception about the long-term impact of conservation agriculture, were key determinants of conservation agriculture adoption. Our paper encourages policymakers to invest in conservation agriculture to overcome food insecurity and environmental changes affecting food systems in the Middle East. The paper also informs agribusiness firms to view conservation agriculture as a viable alternative to strengthen their business relationship with farmers in arid and semi-arid regions.

Cocoa yields in Côte d'Ivoire are low and falling each year, in part as a result of full-sun cropping systems. Thus, interest is now high in establishing sustainable cocoa agroforests through the re-introduction of shade trees. This article uses data collected from a sample of 400 cocoa farmers in the Soubré region of Côte d'Ivoire to rank the top alternative tree species of interest to farmers and to analyze the determinants of their presence and density in cocoa farms. Results show that the most significant determinants are: social network effects, ethnic group, and geographic zone. Also, poorer farmers and those in more isolated villages were more likely to associate their cocoa with crops popular for household consumption like oil palm. We thus suggest that future agroforestry programs should tailor the tree species promoted based on location, ethnic group, market access, and income level, and that extension programs should be designed to take advantage of networking effects.

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