Conservation Agriculture Based Systems and Their Impact On Climate Change, Food Security and the Poor.

Farming systems based on the three principles of conservation agriculture (CA) – minimum soil disturbance, soil cover with crop residues and crop rotation – result in benefits in increased productivity of land, labor and capital, reduced soil and land degradation (and therefore increased sustainability) and reduced emissions of greenhouse gases. Although widely adopted by farmers managing large, mechanized, commercial agricultural enterprises, the principles of CA are equally applicable to smallholder farmers, but methods and techniques need to be developed to apply these principles to the circumstances of resource-poor smallholders. Today there are several examples of successful CA adoption among smallholder farming communities in the developing world.  Importantly for risk-averse smallholder farmers, risk is reduced by CA, especially in rainfed and water scarce environments. In most parts of the developing world the riskiness of agriculture is likely to increase with climate change:  apart from temperature increases, drought frequency and intensity will increase in some areas, and waterlogging and erosion in others. CA provides farmers with a practice to mitigate the effects of extreme weather events, both today and under future climate scenarios: water use efficiency (especially rainfall efficiency) is increased, maximum diurnal soil temperature is reduced and wind and water erosion reduced – providing benefits also to downstream users and the population in general. However, CA systems, while removing from productive conventionally-tilled systems the components that degrade the soil and land, still require good crop management and attention to all other crop requirements for high productivity: they are not low input systems – sufficient inputs need to be applied not only for optimum short-term economic yields but also to produce sufficient crop residues for soil cover. Thus there is a need for adequate credit, market, policy, insurance and information support for smallholder farmers to permit them the use of optimal agricultural practices.