Mobilizing Greater Crop and Land Potentials with Conservation Agriculture

The engine that supplies food and agricultural products is the way we farm. The current dominant engine of conventional tillage farming based on the Green Revolution agriculture mind-set is faltering and needs to be replaced to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the future food and agricultural demands by consumers and society. This chapter elaborates on the alternate no-till Conservation Agriculture (CA) paradigm (involving no-till seeding in soils with mulch cover and in diversified cropping systems). This new paradigm of CA is able to raise productivity sustainably and efficiently, reduce inputs, regenerate degraded land, minimize soil erosion, and harness the flow of ecosystem services. CA is an ecosystems approach to regenerative farming which is capable of enhancing the economic and environmental performance of crop production and land management that can contribute to achieving several SDGs. The new CA paradigm also promotes a mind-set change of producing ‘more from less’ inputs, the key attitude needed to move towards sustainable production based on agro-ecological intensification of output. CA is spreading globally in all continents at an annual rate of around 10 M ha of cropland. The current (in 2015/16) spread of CA is approximately 180 M ha, of which 48% is located in the Global South. CA not only provides the possibility of increased crop yields and profit for the low input smallholder farmer, it also provides a pro-poor rural and agricultural development model to support sustainable agricultural intensification in low income countries in an affordable manner for poverty alleviation, food security and economic development. However, for SDGs to contribute real lasting value to the quality of human life and to nature, the current and future human and ethical consequences of the uncontrolled consumer demands and pressures placed upon agricultural production by the food and agriculture system as a whole must be addressed