Importance

Environmental

aayush — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 05:28:50 +0000

Environmental aayush Tue, 11/20/2018 - 11:13

The adoption of CA can help improve the quality of soils, water systems, and air. Reduced soil erosion due to less exposure to both water runoff and wind, is a major benefit of the low soil disturbance and soil cover principles of CA. As less land is plowed and more soil is covered with residues, the severity of dust storms will decline. Improvements in soil fertility, especially soil structure and cycling of nutrients through the use of legumes, can reduce the need for fertilizer applications, and reductions in weeds, diseases and pests may decrease the reliance on pesticides. There has been much speculation about the ability of CA to increase soil organic matter, sequester carbon and possibly mitigate the effects of carbon dioxide emissions and greenhouse gas effects. ZT can reduce the use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions associated with agricultural production in some cases. After six years of CA experiments in Syria, the carbon sequestration rate measured was in the range of 0.27 to 0.30 Mg C/ha/year, and this rather modest increase was probably due to low to moderate crop productivity and a reasonable starting soil organic matter content of about 1.3 percent.

Economic

kiran — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 16:09:04 +0000

Economic kiran Tue, 10/02/2018 - 21:54

The elimination of plowing costs, along with reductions in seed inputs decreases the cost of crop production. Even without any increase in production (which is sometimes the case), CA usually reduces costs and thereby increases profits. But when combined with the production increase discussed above, the net economic effect is significant. Of course other crops will also benefit from CA. Similarly, CA could have a major impact on the economic productivity and food security of many countries across the Middle East and North Africa, reducing their reliance on imports to feed their populations.

Production and Productivity

kiran — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 16:08:26 +0000

Production and Productivity kiran Tue, 10/02/2018 - 21:53

Productivity increases are common in well managed CA systems. Yield increases of 12-20% were measured in wheat, barley, lentil and chickpea, when all principles of CA were employed along with early sowing in experiments over four years. A key step in achieving grain yield improvement is the successful establishment of the ZT crop. The average wheat yields of farmer who used ZT and early sowing were 160-495 kg/ha greater than farmers using conventional tillage and sowing times. Yield increases are also evident in both dry and favorable seasons, and in fields where supplemental irrigation is used. These yield increases can be attributed to increased rainfall infiltration (reduced run-off), moisture conservation over summer and during the growing season, enhanced water-use efficiency of the early sown crops, and improved soil structure and fertility. So CA helped avoid the effects of drought and enabled crops to produce useful yields even in the driest conditions.