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The role of
conservation agriculture in sustainable
agriculture.
Department of Crops
and Soil Science, Cornell University,
Ithaca, NY
The paper focuses on
conservation agriculture (CA), defined as
minimal soil disturbance (no-till, NT) and
permanent soil cover (mulch) combined with
rotations, as a more sustainable cultivation
system for the future. Cultivation and
tillage play an important role in
agriculture. The benefits of tillage in
agriculture are explored before introducing
conservation tillage (CT), a practice that
was borne out of the American dust bowl of
the 1930s. The paper then describes the
benefits of CA, a suggested improvement on
CT, where NT, mulch and rotations
significantly improve soil properties and
other biotic factors. The paper concludes
that CA is a more sustainable and
environmentally friendly management system
for cultivating crops. Case studies from the
rice-wheat areas of the Indo-Gangetic Plains
of South Asia and the irrigated maize-wheat
systems of Northwest Mexico are used to
describe how CA practices have been used in
these two environments to raise production
sustainably and profitably. Benefits in
terms of greenhouse gas emissions and their
effect on global warming are also discussed.
The paper concludes that agriculture in the
next decade will have to sustainably produce
more food from less land through more
efficient use of natural resources and with
minimal impact on the environment in order
to meet growing population demands.
Promoting and adopting CA management systems
can help meet this goal.
