Conservation Agriculture: Impact on farmers’ livelihoods, labour, mechanization and equipment

Conservation Agriculture (CA) is defined as a concept for resource-saving agricultural crop production that strives to achieve acceptable profits, high and sustained production levels while concurrently conserving the environment. It is regarded as sustainable land management tool for agricultural lands. CA is based on enhancing natural biological processes above and below the ground. Interventions such as mechanical soil tillage are reduced to an absolute minimum, and the use of external inputs such as agrochemicals, nutrients of mineral or organic origin are applied at an optimum level and in a way and quantity that does not interfere with or disrupt the biological processes. In some cases external inputs are reduced to zero. CA is characterized by three principles which are linked to each other, namely: 1. minimum mechanical soil disturbance throughout the entire crop rotation 2. permanent organic soil cover, 3. diversified crop rotations in case of annual crops or plant associations in case of perennial crops With the increased adoption of conservation agriculture the experience with the system grew and other implications and benefits were noted. These benefits impact directly on the livelihoods of the farmer through the effect on profitability of farming and especially the largely reduced labour requirements. Especially for a small scale family farm a vulnerable households with limited labour resources the introduction of conservation agriculture can lead to significant improvements in the livelihood through stabilizing the natural resource base and at the same contributing to more stable yields even in drought affected years. By changing some key operations the approach has also an impact on the agricultural mechanization and the equipment choices and hence influences in the long term the agricultural machinery supply sector. Dealers and sales points in rural areas will likely to be encouraged to adjust their outlets if increased demand for CA relevant equipment gets more evident. The paper will briefly explain the features of conservation agriculture which lead to these changes and then report in more detail experiences which have been observed in the long term after the introduction of conservation agriculture on the livelihood of farmers, labour requirements, mechanization and equipment use.