Conservation Agriculture and Management of Soil and Water
A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472). This special issue belongs to the section "Agricultural Systems and Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 July 2021) | Viewed by 12527
Special Issue Editors
Interests: soil and water conservation; erosion management; soil fertility; water use efficiency; capacity building for developing countries
Interests: soil; environment; sustainable agriculture; biogeochemistry; soil and water conservation; carbon sequestration; soil ecology; land degradation; conservation agriculture; organic agriculture
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The concept of conservation agriculture (CA), with the benefits to agricultural production driven by soil and water conservation, has been known since the 1950s, when the term conservation farming was first used, mainly in the context of reduced tillage. Nonetheless, large-scale adoption of CA did not occur until well into the 1990s and is still largely confined to developed countries, except for some places in South America. Reasons for adopting CA in industrial agricultural systems are largely based on the cost of weed control as herbicide costs declined over time, while fuel costs for tillage operations increased. Adoption of CA is still very low in most developing countries where subsistence type agriculture is still commonplace, particularly in Africa. The adoption incentive in those agroecological environments is not yet driven by the need to manage agricultural enterprises as businesses but by increasing product quantity and reliability. Adoption is also hampered by the yield gap, which often applies when farmers change from conventional practice to CA, and there are competing uses for crop residues. Emerging issues in farming systems where CA has become common practice are stratification of nutrients and herbicide resistance, while mounting pressure on safe use of herbicides will also play a crucial role in the future of CA. Management options to overcome these problems may involve occasional tillage that may partly undermine the principles of CA. There are also questions about the ability of CA systems to sequester carbon, under what conditions it occurs, and where it does not. These questions will be addressed in this Special Issue on CA in the context of soil and water management.
Dr. Gunnar KirchhofProf. Dr. Joshua O. Ogunwole
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- conservation agriculture
- soil and water conservation
- soil erosion
- reduced tillage
- minimum tillage
- strategic tillage
- occasional tillage
- water use efficiency
- nutrient stratification
- weed management
- herbicide use
- carbon sequestration
- farming system adoption
- yield gap
- site specific management