Southern Africa is likely to be heavily affected by a changing climate and the brunt will have to be shouldered by smallholder farmers in rural areas. Long-term experiments on climate-smart sustainable intensification practices offer the opportunity to evaluate and assess the potential impact of a more variable climate on crop productivity. Here, we used meta-analytic and meta-regression approaches to assess the response of different Conservation Agriculture (CA) systems across experiments as compared to conventional practices (CP) of varying experimental duration, established in trial locations of Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe under an increasingly variable climate. We assessed how different agro-environmental yield response moderators such as type of crop diversification and amount of rainfall affect maize yield responses. Smallholder farmers, often living below the poverty line, are primarily concerned about short-term gains from agriculture systems accepting loss in longer-term sustainability. We therefore aim to identify cropping systems that may provide both short-term gains and longer-term sustainability. Results show that: a) long-term trends in yield performance are a result of many factors; b) the greatest yield gains between the best performing CA and least performing treatments at each location ranged between + 34% and + 117%; c) the greatest yields were found in direct seeded rotation systems; d) type of crop diversification and type of crop used in the diversification strategy affect yield response, with rotations involving legumes being more responsive than any practice without diversification; e) CA systems gains increase with time of practice as compared to CP and these responses are more pronounced under low to moderate rainfall, and in well drained soils. We therefore conclude that crop yield response under CA is determined by many yield defining agro-environmental factors and benefits of CA become more apparent with time.

南部非洲可能会受到气候变化的严重影响，而农村地区的小农将首当其冲。气候智能型可持续集约化实践的长期实验为评估和评估气候变化更大的气候对作物生产力的潜在影响提供了机会。在这里，我们使用元分析和元回归方法来评估不同保护性农业 (CA) 系统在不同实验持续时间的传统做法 (CP) 中的反应，这些做法在马拉维、莫桑比克、赞比亚的试验地点建立，和津巴布韦在日益变化的气候下。我们评估了不同的农业环境产量响应调节因素，如作物多样化类型和降雨量如何影响玉米产量响应。小农通常生活在贫困线以下，他们主要担心农业系统接受长期可持续性损失的短期收益。因此，我们的目标是确定可以提供短期收益和长期可持续性的种植系统。结果表明： a) 产量表现的长期趋势是多种因素共同作用的结果；b) 在每个位置，表现最好的 CA 和表现最差的处理之间的最大产量增益介于 + 34% 和 + 117% 之间；c) 直接播种轮作系统的产量最高；d) 作物多样化的类型和多样化战略中使用的作物类型会影响产量响应，涉及豆类的轮作比没有多样化的任何做法更具响应性；e) 与 CP 相比，CA 系统增益随着实践时间的推移而增加，并且这些响应在低到中等降雨量下以及在排水良好的土壤中更为明显。因此，我们得出结论，CA 下的作物产量响应由许多定义农业环境因素的产量决定，并且 CA 的好处随着时间的推移变得更加明显。