Global CA-CoP CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
for sustainable agriculture and land management
Amir Kassam
Moderator
Global CA-CoP
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: www.fao.org/ag/ca
Conservation Agriculture is an ecosystem approach to regenerative sustainable agriculture and land management based on the practical application of context-specific and locally adapted three interlinked principles of: (i) Continuous no or minimum mechanical soil disturbance (no-till seeding/planting and weeding, and minimum soil disturbance with all other farm operations including harvesting); (ii) permanent maintenance of soil mulch cover (crop biomass, stubble and cover crops); and (iii) diversification of cropping system (economically, environmentally and socially adapted rotations and/or sequences and/or associations involving annuals and perennials, including legumes and cover crops), along with other complementary good agricultural production and land management practices. Conservation Agriculture systems are present in all continents, involving rainfed and irrigated systems including annual cropland systems, perennial systems, orchards and plantation systems, agroforestry systems, crop-livestock systems, pasture and rangeland systems, organic production systems and rice-based systems (more at: www.fao.org/ag/ca).
The Compendium provides guidelines for the collection and analysis of information about the diversity of crops, livestock, pollinators and harvested wild plants. The methods described have all been used with communities around the world in landscapes with diverse environmental and cultural features. These methods can be adapted to specific research contexts and combined with many methods not covered in the Compendium.
This is the first version of the Compendium. PAR plans to add further sections to future versions, e.g. on assessing soil biodiversity. Your comments, suggestions for ways of improving the Compendium, corrections would be most welcome and should be sent to [log in to unmask]
Assessing Agrobiodiversity: A Compendium of Methods has been developed with the support of The Christensen Fund, and in partnership with Bioversity International, Rome; Centre for Sustainable Development (CENESTA), Iran; Instituto de Investigaciones en Agricultura Tropical (INIFAT), Cuba; Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development (LI-BIRD), Nepal; North East Slow Food & Agrobiodiversity Society (NESFAS), India; Pgakenyaw Association for Sustainable Development (PASD), Thailand; Southern Alliance for Indigenous Resources (SAFIRE), Zimbabwe; Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Czech Republic; Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry, UK.To unsubscribe from the CA-Cop-L list, click the following link:
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