Conservation Agriculture as a System to Enhance Ecosystem Services

Conservation agriculture (CA) is considered a sustainable practice with the potential to maintain or increase crop productivity and improve environmental quality ecosystem services. It typically improves soil water conservation; however, its effect on highly variable dependent local conditions/management. Crop residue retention plays crucial role in CA can help overall health ultimately sustainability. However, weed control, herbicide resistance, shift under retained fields major challenge. Moreover, infiltration reduce loss runoff. This reduces surface transport of nitrate phosphorus from agricultural eutrophication bodies, although leaching groundwater potentially increase. In addition, has been proposed as one components climate-smart agriculture, owing reduced period seed/plant next crop, disturbance low consumption fossil fuels. Therefore, compared conventional intensive tillage, greater for C sequestration, favors higher biodiversity, lowers greenhouse gas emission, assist mitigating climate change. not all experiments report positive impact. The understanding decoding site-specific complexities system important requires multidisciplinary approach.