Sustainable Agriculture and Soil Conservation

The role of conservation agriculture in sustainable agriculture.

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...

Sustainable Agriculture, Soil Health, and Soil Organic Matter

The latter two principles protect the soil resource on which all food and fibre production ultimately depends. However, agricultural production systems differ from ‘natural’ or undeveloped systems in that they can be considered to be ‘leaky’ with respect to nutrients. This is inevitable, due to nutrient removal in harvested product, but inappropriate fertiliser management can exacerbate the ‘le...

Soil and crop management under conservation agriculture in Zimbabwe

Carbon mitigation strategies and mechanisms have been globally implemented in an attempt to prevent catastrophic climate change. Kyoto targets require reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and increases in carbon sequestration. Although a number of carbon neutral technologies have been adopted such as bio-fuel and alternative energies, these currently fail to meet global requirements. An innov...

Conservation of natural resources for sustainable Agriculture Introduction

Indigenous African soil enrichment as a climatesmart sustainable agriculture alternative

© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org D some improvement in environmental outcomes, conventional agriculture continues to contribute to biodiversity loss, climate change, and the degradation of terrestrial and freshwater systems (Foley et al. 2011 ). A major global challenge is to develop sustainable, “climatesmart” agricultural systems that feed growing populations and...