Global CA-CoP CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

for sustainable agriculture and ecosystem management


Dear Subscribers,


Please see the November 15th 2020 Conservation Agriculture Scoopit Research Update from Cornell.

Thank you Professor Peter Hobbs for sharing.


Amir Kassam

Moderator

Global CA-CoP

e-mail: [log in to unmask]

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



---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Peter Hobbs <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2020 at 15:33
Subject: November 15th Cornell CA newsletter
To: Amir Kassam <[log in to unmask]>

Dear Amir: 

Here is our November 15th 2020 Conservation Agriculture Scoopit Research Update. You can also view online at https://www.scoop.it/topic/conservation-agriculture-by-conservation-ag?curate=true&null 
Can you send this out to people who get your listserv material? The hard copy is below. Many thanks for helping to distribute this. Peter

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

Also, visit our main website at http://soilhealth.org for news and other CA information. Please use this link since we had to move our web site to a new server and this links takes you to the CA web site.

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This study examines different tillage practices to provide urgently needed empirical evidence on how profitable it is for farmers to adopt no-burn technologies after rice harvest in NW India. The paper analyses the cost of rice residue management and wheat sowing under conventional-tillage and zero-tillage, and identify factors influencing the adoption of sowing wheat directly into large amounts of crop residue using the Happy Seeder (HS) (a seed drill made locally)   and quantify its impact on wheat yields and –production costs. They conclude that benefits of HS use combined with its societal benefits of reducing air pollution and enhancing agricultural sustainability justify policy support for its large-scale diffusion, to be supplemented by a stricter enforcement of the ban on residue burning.
This study reviews the literature on benefits, trade-offs, adoption and adaptation of CA in sub-Saharan Africa. They suggest that while CA can improve soils and sustain crop yields, benefits are inconsistent and there are trade-offs with crop residue use, weeds and insect pests, labour demands and short-term yield penalties. They suggest CA adoption in SSA could be improved by focusing the promotion of CA to environments where it best fits, or by facilitating smallholders’ adaptation of the practices of CA to respond to their conditions and constraints. They propose to move from Conservation Agriculture to Conservation Practices by: (A) identifying and overcoming locally important CA trade-offs through adaptations and complementary practices, and (B) finding farm-specific optimal combinations of practices in terms of feasibility and benefits.
Mixed groups of scientists including soil scientists, agronomists, agricultural economists and other environmental scientists, facilitated by experienced senior researchers, were presented with multiple subsets each of three states, and asked to rank the states in each subset with respect to expected yield improvement under CA in South Africa. The results revealed two contrasting groups of conceptual assumptions. One group broadly expected larger absolute yield improvements from conservation agriculture in settings where water is most likely to be limiting and the carbon status of the soil is poor. By contrast, the other group expected larger improvements where water was less likely to be limiting. Modelling the ranking process, could be of more general interest for the elicitation of expert opinion about complex soil, crop and environmental systems.
This study explores the social inclusiveness of zero-tillage (ZT) wheat adoption in Bihar, India. ZT is a proven technology for enhancing wheat productivity while boosting profitability and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the densely populated Indo-Gangetic Plains. With an average landholding size of 0.39 ha, most farmers in Bihar depend on custom-hiring services to access the technology. They use a panel dataset from 961 wheat-growing households that spans a six-year period to analyze ZT adoption dynamics over time while accounting for the role of social networks and access to service provision. They find that as awareness of the technology increased the service economy expanded. Land fragmentation replaced total landholding size as a significant adoption determinant, which also affected the quality of ZT services received. Hence, farmers with small but contiguous landholdings appear to have gained a significant degree of access over time. We conclude that early-stage assessments may be misleading, and that private sector-based service provision can contribute to socially inclusive development outcomes as markets mature.




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