Consevtion agriculture (CA) encompasses three components (minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop rotations). It has been widely promulgated to smallholders throughout sub-saharan Africa and Madagascar for over ten years as a strategy to enhance crop productivity by restoring inherent soil fertility. The low adoption rates, however, spurred increased interest to better understand the challenges and constraints farmers face when implementing this technology, as affected ty regional and farm-specific factors. Parallel to this, there have been observations of partial adoption of the CA package, or so-called innovative cropping systems. This process has resulted in a heightened interest in participatory research, aiming to value existing farmer knowledge and evaluative abilities in terms of assessing potential benefits of existing agroecological practices. This study aimed to enhance our understanding of farmer perceptions of CA in the Lake Alaotra region in Madagascar though close monitoring of ten on-farm field demonstration-experiments which were initiated gy the ABACO project. The experiments were based on CA principles, and were co-designed by farmers and technicians and managed by farmers. Each design was unique and without repetitions. Results and insights from biophysical measurements, open-ended and in-depth interviews with participating farmers and participand observation were triangulated to assess how farmers' interpretations of the field experiments might affect future testing and on-farm decision making. Analysis also touched upon the interaction between CA and the social factors of knowledge sharing and gender.