Global CA-CoP CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

for sustainable agriculture and land management


Dear Subscribers,

Please see herebelow the September Cornell Scoop Newsletter on Conservation Agriculture.

Apologies for any cross-posting.

Amir Kassam

Moderator

Global CA-CoP

e-mail: [log in to unmask]

URL: http://www.fao.org/conservation-agriculture

 

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/or perennials, including legumes and cover crops), along with other complementary good agricultural production and land management practices.


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Peter Hobbs <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2020 at 16:28
Subject: September Cornell Scoopit newsletter
To: Amir Kassam <[log in to unmask]>


Dear Amir: Here is our September 2020 Conservation Agriculture Scoopit Research Update. You can also view on line at https://www.scoop.it/topic/conservation-agriculture-by-conservation-ag?curate=true&null  Can you send this out to people who get your list serve material? The hard copy is below. Many thanks for helping to distribute this. Peter

An easier link to see all of the research papers on CA is as follows:

See our full research database at:


Also, visit our main website at http://soilhealth.org for news and other CA information.

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This chapter outlines the challenges for meeting food security needs now and in the future. It mentions many issues that make this challenge even more difficult. Management systems that make more efficient use of natural resources. These sustainable land management (SLM) practices must also provide the farmers with the means and incentives to experiment with them and encourage farmers to share their experiences with other farmers. This chapter uses three agricultural case studies from three different geographical areas to highlight the challenges encountered in increasing crop productivity, some of which are common to all three regions, while others are specific to the climatic, edaphic, economic and social situations found in a particular region. In all three regions CA has been promoted to farmers in the past few decades as one way to responsibly intensify food production. The case studies explore the drivers of CA adoption in the region and the adaptations that have been made to adapt CA to the particular local conditions. The first two case studies end with a list of agronomic research requirements for the particular region, while the third explores what a Brazilian type of experience with green manure cover crops means for CA systems worldwide.
This meta-analysis in 16 different sub-Saharan Africa countries provides data that contests the claim that CA leads to increasing crop yields  in smallholder farming systems. Their analysis shows that on average only slightly higher CA/ZT yields are obtained compared to conventional systems. 3.7% for 6 major crops and 4% for maize. Larger yield responses for maize (8.4%) result from mulching and crop rotations (2 of the other pillars on CA along with minimal soil disturbance. Their data also showed that yields increased with years of adoption (Fig 4) -- a slight increase in year 1 but 10% in year 10. They conclude that CA is not a technology to overcome low crop yields in the short term. However, I contend that there are many benefits to farmers who adopt CA in the first year, even if yields are equal to conventional practices like reduced costs, better water use efficiency and more. But read the paper first.



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