Mobilizing Greater Crop and Land Potentials with Conservation Agriculture

Abstract

Based on worldwide empirical and scientific evidence, it appears generally evident that CA can play a major role in accelerating production output growth to meet future global food needs. The evidence also suggests that it can do so while arresting soil degradation and improving factor productivity (efficiency of input use) and profit margins, as well as add the much needed resilience to cropping systems and ecosystem services. There is growing evidence to show that CA through improved soil quality enables better phenotypic performance from any adapted genotype, traditional or improved. This is because CA enables agricultural soil and landscape to be treated as living biological entities in which soil biota and their symbiotic relationships with root systems are encouraged while maintaining improved and efficient soil-plant-moisture-nutrient relationships (Jat et al., 2014).