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Biography |
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Amir Kassam is a Visiting Professor in the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, UK, where he teaches a post-graduate course entitled ‘Rethinking Agriculture: Implementing Solutions’. Kassam was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Honours List in 2005 for services to tropical agriculture and to rural development.
Kassam is an adviser in sustainable agriculture intensification with Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Rome, and with The Aga Khan Foundation. He is: Convener of the Land Husbandry Group of the Tropical Agriculture Association (TAA-UK); and Moderator of FAO-hosted Global Platform for Conservation Agriculture Community of Practice (CA-CoP). Kassam’s research and development interests are focussed on the promotion of Conservation Agriculture to address the challenges of food insecurity, poverty, ecosystem degradation, resource constraints and climate change.
Born in Zanzibar, Kassam received his BSc (Hons) in Agriculture and PhD in Agricultural Botany (agro-ecology) from the University of Reading, and MSc in Irrigation from the University of California--Davis. During his career, Kassam has worked with a number of national agricultural research and development institutions in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and with several CGIAR centres. UN agencies and NGOs in the fields of systems development, land resources evaluation for development planning, agro-ecology and analytical agronomy, research management and participatory agriculture and rural development. .
Kassam is Fellow of the Society of Biology, UK; and Associate Editor of the journal of Irrigation Science. He is a former Chairman of: the Aga Khan Foundation (UK); the FOCUS Humanitarian Assistance Europe Foundation; and the TAA-UK. He is a former Deputy Director General of WARDA (Africa Rice Centre), and Interim Executive Secretary of the CGIAR Science Council.
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Abstract |
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The current global trend toward Conservation Agriculture |
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The Current Global Trend Toward Conservation Agriculture
By Amir Kassam and Theodor Friedrich
The global empirical evidence shows that farmer-led transformation of agricultural production systems based on Conservation Agriculture (CA) principles is already occurring and gathering momentum worldwide as a new alternative paradigm of agriculture for the 21st century. The data presented in this paper, mainly based on estimates made by farmer organizations, agro-industry, and well-informed individuals provide an overview of CA adoption and spread by country, as well as the extent of CA adoption by continent. CA systems, comprising minimum mechanical soil disturbance, organic mulch cover, and crop species diversification, in conjunction with other good practices of crop and production management, are now practiced globally on about 125 M ha in all continents and all agricultural ecologies, including in the various temperate environments. While in 1973/74 CA systems covered only 2.8 M ha worldwide, the area had grown in 1999 to 45 M ha, and by 2003 to 72 M ha. In the last 11 years CA systems have expanded at an average rate of more than 7 M ha per year showing the increased interest of farmers and national governments in this alternate production method. Adoption has been intense in North and South America as well as in Australia and New Zealand, and more recently in Asia and Africa where the awareness and adoption of CA is on the increase. The paper presents the history of adoption and analyses reasons and actual regional trends for adoption to draw conclusions about future promotion of CA.
CA calls for a fundamental change in production system thinking. It is counterintuitive, novel and knowledge and management intensive. The roots of the origins of CA lie more in the farming communities than in the scientific community, and its spread has been largely farmer-driven. Experience and empirical evidence across many countries has shown that the rapid adoption and spread of CA requires a change in commitment and behavior of all concerned stakeholders. For the farmers, a mechanism to experiment, learn and adapt is a prerequisite. For policy-makers and institutional leaders, transformation of tillage systems to CA systems requires that they fully understand the large and longer-term economic, social and environmental benefits which the CA paradigm offers to the producers and the society at large. Further, the transformation calls for a sustained policy and institutional support role that can provide incentives and required services to farmers to adopt CA practices and improve them over time.
Originally the adoption of CA was mainly driven by acute problems faced by farmers, especially wind and water erosion, as for example southern Brazil or the Prairies in North America, or drought as in Australia. In all these cases farmers’ organization was the main instrument to generate and spread knowledge that eventually led to mobilizing public, private and civil sector support. More recently, again pressed by erosion and drought problems, exacerbated by increase in cost of energy and production inputs, government support has played an important role in accelerating the adoption rate of CA, leading to the relatively fast adoption rates for example in Kazakhstan and China, but also in African countries such as Zambia and Zimbabwe, among others, and this is attracting support from other stakeholders.
Today the main reasons for adoption of CA can be summarized as follows: (1) better farm economy (reduction of costs in machinery and fuel and time-saving in the operations that permit the development of other agricultural and non-agricultural complementary activities); (2) flexible technical possibilities for sowing, fertilizer application and weed control (allows for more timely operations); (3) yield increases and greater yield stability (as long term effect); (4) soil protection against water and wind erosion; (5) greater nutrient-efficiency; and (6) better water economy in dryland areas. Also, no-till and cover crops are used between rows of perennial crops such as olives, nuts and grapes. CA can be used for winter crops, and for traditional rotations with legumes, sunflower and canola, and in field crops under irrigation where CA can help optimize irrigation system management to conserve water, energy and soil quality, reduce salinity problems and to increase fertilizer use efficiency.
At the landscape level, CA enables several environmental services to be harnessed at a larger scale, particularly C sequestration, cleaner water resources, drastically reduced erosion and runoff, and enhanced biodiversity. Overall, CA as an alternative paradigm for sustainable production intensification offers a number of benefits to the producers, the society and the environment that are not possible to obtain with tillage agriculture. So, CA is not only climate-smart, it is smart in many other ways.
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