Journal ArticleDOI
The spread of Conservation Agriculture: justification, sustainability and uptake
TLDR
The authors in this article estimate that there are now some 106 million ha of arable and permanent crops grown without tillage in CA systems, corresponding to an annual rate of increase globally since 1990 of 5.3 million ha.Abstract:
Conservation Agriculture (CA) has been practised for three decades and has spread widely. We estimate that there are now some 106 million ha of arable and permanent crops grown without tillage in CA systems, corresponding to an annual rate of increase globally since 1990 of 5.3 million ha. Wherever CA has been adopted it appears to have had both agricultural and environmental benefits. Yet CA represents a fundamental change in production system thinking. It has counterintuitive and often unrecognized elements that promote soil health, productive capacity and ecosystem services. The practice of CA thus requires a deeper understanding of its ecological underpinnings in order to manage its various elements for sustainable intensification, where the aim is to optimize resource use and protect or enhance ecosystem processes in space and time over the long term. For these reasons CA is knowledge-intensive. CA constitutes principles and practices that can make a major contribution to sustainable production inten...read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Sustainable intensification in African agriculture
TL;DR: In this article, the authors report that food outputs by sustainable intensification have been multiplicative and additive, by combining the use of new and improved varieties and new agronomic agroecological management (crop yields rose on average by 2.13-fold).
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Current status of adoption of no-till farming in the world and some of its main benefits.
TL;DR: No-tillage farming offers a way of optimizing productivity and ecosystem services, offering a wide range of economic, environmental and social benefits to the producer and to the society as discussed by the authors.
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Sustainable intensification in agricultural systems
TL;DR: This review analyses recent evidence of the impacts of SI in both developing and industrialized countries, and demonstrates that both yield and natural capital dividends can occur.
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Global spread of Conservation Agriculture
TL;DR: In this paper, the practical application of three interlinked principles, namely, no or minimum mechanical soil disturbance, biomass mulch soil cover and crop speci cation, is discussed.
References
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World development report 2008 : agriculture for development
TL;DR: Agriculture is a vital development tool for achieving the Millennium Development Goal that calls for halving by 2015 the share of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger as mentioned in this paper, which is the overall message of this year's World Development Report (WDR), the 30th in the series.
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Soil organic carbon sequestration rates by tillage and crop rotation : A global data analysis
Tristram O. West,Wilfred M. Post +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors quantify potential soil organic carbon sequestration rates for different crops in response to decreasing tillage intensity or enhancing rotation complexity, and to estimate the duration of time over which sequestration may occur.
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Soil health and sustainability: managing the biotic component of soil quality
John W. Doran,Michael R. Zeiss +1 more
TL;DR: A conference entitled "Soil Health: Managing the Biological Component of Soil Quality" was held in the USA in 1998 to help increase awareness of the importance and utility of soil organisms as indicators of soil quality and determinants of soil health.
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Agricultural sustainability: concepts, principles and evidence
TL;DR: Agricultural sustainability suggests a focus on both genotype improvements through the full range of modern biological approaches and improved understanding of the benefits of ecological and agronomic management, manipulation and redesign.