Although Conservation Agriculture has potential benefits for sustainable intensification of farming systems, its adoption in West Africa is low. The Agro-ecology Based Aggradation Conservation Agrciulture-ABACO project aims to adapt the principles of CA to different zones of sub-saharan Africa including Burkina Faso in West Africa. The activities of the project conducted in Burkina Faso relied on innovation platforms where different tools of facilitation were used in order to support discussion with farmers and co-design adapted cropping systems. But even using this participatory process, the research team noticed a high level of failure of the on-farm experiments (60 %). The reasons of such failure are diverse. Some are punctual (low rainfall, bad quality of seeds), other are linked to a lack of technical management of the protocols that could have been improved through testing, other reasons were linked to a decrease of farmers’ interest for cropping systems which do not lead to the short-term results.
In order to maintain farmers’ interest for Conservation Agriculture experiments, the research team organised awards to recognise and reward the best farmers participating in the reseach in the different study sites of the project Koumbia, Sindri and Yilou located respectively in the sudanian and sudano-sahelian part of the country. A panel made-up of representatives of the innovation platforms and research scientists defined jointly a set of selection criteria which included management of the field, knowledge of the CA principles and constraints, capacity to explain the field experiment and its result. Fifteen candidates were selected in a larger sample of 
fourty- nine farmers.
The process involved visiting the field of the candidates and interviewing them in order to do the assessment. Surprisingly farmers who ob
tained the best scores were livestock farmers and not crop farmers. This award allowed identifying farmers applying the protocols without understanding the CA principles indicating that more support from the research team is needed. The selected farmers received a diploma and some field equipment (boots, machete).
Article written by Dabire D, Coulbaly K, Djamen P, Diallo M, Douzet JM, Audrieu N