Conservation Agriculture in Africa

Conservation Agriculture in Africa
Author: Saidi Mkomwa
Publisher: CABI
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2022-01-11
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1789245745

Tillage agriculture has led to widespread soil and ecosystem degradation globally, and more particularly in the developing regions. This is especially so in Africa where traditional agricultural practices have become unsustainable due to severe exploitation of natural resources with negative impacts on the environment and food system. In addition, agricultural land use in Africa today faces major challenges including increased costs, climate change and a need to transform to more sustainable production intensification systems. Conservation Agriculture has emerged as a major alternative sustainable climate smart agriculture approach in Africa and has spread to many African countries in the past decade as more development and research, including in sustainable mechanization, has enabled its extension and uptake. It is key to transforming Africa's agriculture and food system given its ability to restore soil health, biodiversity and productivity of millions of smallholder farms as well as larger-scale farms. This book is aimed at all agricultural stakeholders in the public, private and civil sectors in Africa engaged in supporting the transformation of conventional tillage agriculture to Conservation Agriculture. The book will be of interest to: researchers, academics, students, development stakeholders, public and private sector investors and policy makers as well as institutional libraries across the world.

Conservation Agriculture

Conservation Agriculture
Author: Muhammad Farooq
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 662
Release: 2014-12-03
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319116207

Conservation agriculture—consisting of four components including permanent soil cover, minimum soil disturbance, diversified crop rotations and integrated weed management—is considered the principal pathway to sustainable agriculture and the conservation of natural resources and the environment. Leading researchers in the field describe the basic principles of conservation agriculture, and synthesize recent advances and developments in conservation agriculture research. This book is a ready reference on conservation agriculture and reinforces the understanding for its utilization to develop environmentally sustainable and profitable food production systems. The book describes various elements of conservation agriculture; highlights the associated breeding and modeling efforts; analyses the experiences and challenges in conservation agriculture in different regions of the world; and proposes some pragmatic options and new areas of research in this very important area of agriculture.

Increasing the adoption of conservation agriculture: A framed field experiment in Northern Ghana

Increasing the adoption of conservation agriculture: A framed field experiment in Northern Ghana
Author: Ambler, Kate
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 55
Release: 2020-05-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Conservation agriculture techniques can increase agricultural production while decreasing CO2 emissions, yet adoption in the developing world remains low—in part because many years of continuous adoption may be required to realize gains in production. We conduct a framed field experiment in northern Ghana to study how randomly assigned incentives and peer information may affect adoption. Incentives increase adoption, both while they are available and after withdrawal. There is no overall effect of peer information, but we do find evidence that information about long-term adoption increased adoption, particularly when that information shows that production gains have been achieved.

The Economics of Conservation Agriculture

The Economics of Conservation Agriculture
Author:
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
Total Pages: 78
Release: 2001
Genre: Agricultural conservation
ISBN: 9789251046876

Conservation agriculture aims to make better use of agricultural resources through the integrated management of available soil, water and biological resources, combined with limited external inputs. This study examines the financial and non-financial factors that affect the adoption and success of conservation agriculture at farm, national and global levels.

Drawdown

Drawdown
Author: Paul Hawken
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2017-04-18
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1524704652

• New York Times bestseller • The 100 most substantive solutions to reverse global warming, based on meticulous research by leading scientists and policymakers around the world “At this point in time, the Drawdown book is exactly what is needed; a credible, conservative solution-by-solution narrative that we can do it. Reading it is an effective inoculation against the widespread perception of doom that humanity cannot and will not solve the climate crisis. Reported by-effects include increased determination and a sense of grounded hope.” —Per Espen Stoknes, Author, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming “There’s been no real way for ordinary people to get an understanding of what they can do and what impact it can have. There remains no single, comprehensive, reliable compendium of carbon-reduction solutions across sectors. At least until now. . . . The public is hungry for this kind of practical wisdom.” —David Roberts, Vox “This is the ideal environmental sciences textbook—only it is too interesting and inspiring to be called a textbook.” —Peter Kareiva, Director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA In the face of widespread fear and apathy, an international coalition of researchers, professionals, and scientists have come together to offer a set of realistic and bold solutions to climate change. One hundred techniques and practices are described here—some are well known; some you may have never heard of. They range from clean energy to educating girls in lower-income countries to land use practices that pull carbon out of the air. The solutions exist, are economically viable, and communities throughout the world are currently enacting them with skill and determination. If deployed collectively on a global scale over the next thirty years, they represent a credible path forward, not just to slow the earth’s warming but to reach drawdown, that point in time when greenhouse gases in the atmosphere peak and begin to decline. These measures promise cascading benefits to human health, security, prosperity, and well-being—giving us every reason to see this planetary crisis as an opportunity to create a just and livable world.

Conservation Agriculture

Conservation Agriculture
Author: Ram A. Jat
Publisher: CABI
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2013-12-13
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1780642598

The book covers the spread of conservation agriculture (CA) to regions including Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Australia, Europe and emerging CA destinations in Asia and Africa. ÿTopics covered include the various components of CA, and how their individual and combined implementation influence productivity, soil health and environmental quality under diverse edaphic and climatic conditions. The book will be useful to teachers, researchers, extensionists, farmers, and students interested in environmental quality.

Sustainable Intensification

Sustainable Intensification
Author: Jules N. Pretty
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2012-06-25
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1136529276

Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.

Irrigation in Southern and Eastern Asia in Figures

Irrigation in Southern and Eastern Asia in Figures
Author: Karen Frenken
Publisher: Fao Inter-Departmental Working Group
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2012
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The AQUASTAT Programme was initiated with a view to presenting a comprehensive picture of water resources and irrigation in the countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and providing systematic, up-to-date and reliable information on water for agriculture and rural development. This report presents the results of the most recent survey carried out in the 22 countries of the Southern and Eastern Asia region, and it analyzes the changes that have occurred in the ten years since the first survey. Following the AQUASTAT methodology, the survey relied as much as possible on country-based statistics and information.

Nature-based solutions in agriculture: The case and pathway for adoption

Nature-based solutions in agriculture: The case and pathway for adoption
Author: ​Iseman, T., Miralles-Wilhelm, F.
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
Total Pages: 53
Release: 2021-02-03
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9251339082

Food system demands have increased exponentially in recent decades and are estimated to continue growing as global populations increase and economic affluence expands. However, the very foundation of a productive system – healthy lands and soils and clean water supply – is already under immense pressure. In fact, by the most credible estimates, up to 52% of global agricultural lands are now moderately to severely degraded, with millions of hectares per year degrading to the point they are abandoned by the land manager. The loss of productive land, coupled with increased food demand, pushes agriculture to be the primary driver in 80% of native habitat loss. Agricultural irrigation is driving the majority of water scarcity issues in high-risk basins threatening food systems, community water supplies and ecosystem health. These pressures have resulted in the global agriculture sector driving more biodiversity loss, destruction of natural habitat, soil degradation and depletion of natural resources around the world than any other industry.