Conservation Agriculture
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1 What is Conservation Agriculture?
CA is a concept for resource-saving agricultural crop production that strives to achieve acceptable profits together with high and sustained production levels while concurrently conserving the environment. CA is based on enhancing natural biological processes above and below the ground. Interventions such as mechanical soil tillage are reduced to an absolute minimum, and the use of external inputs such as agrochemicals and nutrients of mineral or organic origin are applied at an optimum level and in a way and quantity that does not interfere with, or disrupt, the biological processes.
2 Conservation Agriculture and its Dynamics
1. Conservation means preservation especially of natural environment. The word conserve stands for store up or preserve for later use.
2. Conservation agriculture, a term introduced in the 1970s, was adopted by the U.N. Foodand Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome in the 1990s (FAO CA web site, 2004).
3. Conservation agriculture (CA) aims to achieve sustainable and profitable agriculture and subsequently aims at improved livelihoods of farmers through the application of the three
3 Principles of Conservation Agriculture
• minimal soil disturbance,
• permanent soil cover and crop rotations.
• Suitable for all agro-ecological systems,
• small-holder farmers, especially those facing acute labour shortages.
• Combine profitable agricultural production with environmental concerns and sustainability and
4 Status of Conservation Agriculture
• Globally, about 100 million hectare area.
• 45 million hectare in 1999 and expanded to 95 million hectare in 2005.
• Across the countries, the conservation agriculture is practiced in United States of America (25 million hectare), Brazil (24 million hectare), Argentina (18 million hectare), Canada (13 million hectare) and Australia (9 million hectare).
5 Indian status
1. Green revolution wrongly affect the farm ecology and economics, require to development of evergreen revolution.
2. India has also started conservation agriculture and retained leading position among the developing nation.
3. More than 2 million hectare area under the rice-wheat based system in the Indo-gangetic plain is under resource conservation technologies.
6 Strategies to be followed for CA in India.
1. Crop diversification
2. Direct Seeded rice
3. Organic management
4. Zero tillage
5. Brown manuring
6. Residue management
7. Next generation machinery
8. Lesser levelling
9. Real time nutrient management
10. Real time water management
