Making Sustainable Agriculture Real in CAP 2020: The Role of Conservation Agriculture

Europe is about to redefine its Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) for the near future. The question is whether this redefinition is more a fine-tuning of the existing CAP or whether thorough changes can be expected. Looking back to the last revision of CAP the most notable change is, undoubtedly, the concern about EU and global food security. The revival of the interest in agricultural production already became evident during the Health Check as a consequence of climbing commodity prices in 2007/08. It is therefore no surprise that “rising concerns regarding both EU and global food security” is the first topic to appear in the list of justifications for the need for a CAP reform. Other challenges mentioned in this list such as sustainable management of natural resources, climate change and its mitigation, improvement of competitiveness to withstand globalization and rising price volatility, etc., while not new are considered worthwhile enough to be maintained and reappraised

Spatial and temporal variability of CO2 emisions in soils under conventional tillage and no-till farming

Agricultural soils can act as a carbon sink depending on the soil management practices employed. As a result of this functional duality, soil management systems are present in international documents relating to climate change mitigation. Agricultural practices are responsible for 14% of total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG’s) (MMA, 2009)(1). Conservation agriculture (CA) is one of the most effective agricultural systems for reducing CO2 emissions, as it increases the sequestration of atmospheric carbon in the soil. In order to assess the performance of CA in terms of CO2 emissions, a field trial was conducted comparing soil derived CO2 fluxes under No-till (NT) farming and under conventional tillage. Three pilot farms were selected in the cereal-growing area of southern Spain, located in Las Cabezas de San Juan (Seville), Carmona (Seville) and Cordoba. Each pilot farm comprises six experimental plots with an approximate area of five hectares; three of the six plots implement CA practices, while the other three use conventional tillage techniques. The subdivision of each tillage system into 3 plots allowed the simultaneous cropping of the three crops of the wheat-sunflower-legume rotation each year. Results showed that carbon dioxide emissions were 31 to 91% higher in tilled soils than in untilled soils, and that there was a great seasonal variability of CO2 emissions, as weather conditions also differed considerably for the different sampling periods. In all cases, the CO2 fluxes emitted into the atmosphere were always higher when soil was subject to conventional tillage

Conservation agriculture in the dry Mediterranean climate

The objective of this article is to review: (a) the concepts and principles that underpin Conservation Agriculture (CA) ecologically and operationally; (b) the potential benefits that can be harnessed through CA systems in the dry Mediterranean climates; (c) current status of adoption and spread of CA in the dry Mediterranean climate countries; and (d) opportunities for CA in the Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) region. CA, comprising minimum mechanical soil disturbance and no-tillage seeding, organic mulch cover, and crop diversification is now practised on some 125 million ha, corresponding to about 9% of the global arable cropped land. Globally, the area under CA is spread across all continents and all agro-ecologies, including the dryland climates in the Mediterranean basin region as well as in the Mediterranean climates elsewhere in the world. Worldwide empirical and scientific evidence is available to show that significant productivity, economic, social and environmental benefits exist that can be harnessed through the adoption of CA principles for sustainable production intensification in the dry Mediterranean climates, including those in the CWANA region. The benefits include: fundamental change for the better in the sustainability of production systems and ecosystem services; higher stable yields and incomes; climate change adaptation and reduced vulnerability to the highly erratic rainfall distribution; and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. CA has taken off globally and is now spreading in several Mediterranean climates outside the Mediterranean basin particularly in South America, South Africa and Australia. In the dry Mediterranean climates in the CWANA region, CA is perceived to be a powerful tool of land management but CA has not yet taken off. Research on CA in the CWANA region has shown that there are opportunities for CA adoption in rainfed and irrigated farming systems involving arable and perennial crops as well as livestock

Proceedings of the 8th World Congress on Conservation Agriculture

Under the banner: The Future of Farming – Profitable and Sustainable Farming with Conservation Agriculture, the 8WCCA highlighted the global contribution of Conservation Agriculture towards achieving these outcomes. It also explored how CA land use can help to address humankind’s major global challenges of climate change, environmental degradation and food security while safeguarding the livelihoods of small and large-scale farmers. The proven benefits of CA in terms of erosion control, carbon sequestration, biodiversity regeneration, and improved water and nutrient cycling are all contributing to the achievement of the manifold objectives of the international conventions and agreements including the Sustainable Development Goals, European Green Deal and F2F Strategy

Green Carbon: Making sustainable agriculture real

The concept of sustainable development has evolved from a mere movement for the protection of the environment, to other multidimensional approaches. Indeed, today it calls for a holistic approach, seeking to preserve and improve not only the environment, but also to achieve social equity and economic sustainability. In Europe, society demands quality and safe products, not only in the industrial sector but also in agriculture. According to FAO, sustainable agriculture development is a key element of the new global challenges to meet human food security needs at 2050. Unsustainable practices based on intensive soil tillage and agro-chemical applications have increased agri-environmental risks. Whereas world’s food needs are expected to increase by 70% by 2050, agricultural land in Europe will also have to face environmental, economic and social challenges related to sustainable agriculture. As a result, in the EU 2020 Strategy, it is expressed that the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is required to contribute to smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, enhancing social well-being, providing ecosystem services, managing resources sustainably while avoiding environmental degradation. There is broad consensus within the scientific sector that human actions generate a large portion of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, causing global warming. Certainly, Kyoto Protocol states it. According to the European Environmental Agency (EEA), there has been a decrease of 17% in GHG emissions between 1990 and 2009. However, EEA also stressed the importance of the agricultural contribution to total emissions (10.3%). The fossil fuel used in agricultural field operations, along with increasing CO2 emissions from soil through tillage, are considered to be one of the main direct sources of GHG emissions from agriculture sector. Increased inputs required to sustain conventional agriculture also adds significantly to total GHG emissions. Therefore, intensification of production through tillage, agro-chemicals and heavy machinery, which characterizes conventional agriculture in Europe, strongly contributes to increased net GHG emissions instead of mitigating global warming. Sustainable agricultural soil management is crucial for mitigating climate change, especially for the restoration of lost soil organic carbon. In fact, "Agricultural soils management" is recognized as one of the 15 most promising technology options for reducing GHG emissions in the COM (2005) 35 final "Winning the battle against global climate change." The Green Carbon Conference aims to show sustainable management of agricultural soils can help to agriculture mitigate and adapt to climate change, being compatible with the objectives of environmental protection, enhancing biodiversity and supporting farmers’ welfare along with many other environmental, economic and social benefits. Over the last decade, Conservation Agriculture has become known as a set of interlinked agricultural practices, of no or minimum mechanical soil disturbance, maintenance of soil mulch cover, and diversified cropping system, capable of: (a) overcoming several of the severe sustainability limitations of conventional agriculture; and (b) raising productivity, enhancing resilience, reducing degradation and increasing the flow of ecosystem services. The discussion around both the Soil Thematic Strategy initiated in 2002, and the JRC SoCo (Soil Conservation) project clearly recognized the potential of Conservation Agriculture in mitigating and even reversing the problems of soil erosion, soil organic matter decline, soil compaction, loss of biodiversity, climate change vulnerability, among others. Whereas Conservation Agriculture is now practiced successfully on more than 125 million hectares worldwide, Europe has shown to be reluctant with regard to its adoption, despite many promising results confirming its suitability in Europe. Therefore, this European Conference on Green Carbon provides an opportunity to take a leap forward in terms of sharing farmers experiences on Conservation Agriculture across Europe, reviewing the recent progress made in knowledge generation regarding Conservation Agriculture, and to disseminate the outcomes of the currently running LIFE+ Agricarbon (LIFE08 ENV/E/000129). The slogan of ‘Green Carbon’ chosen for this Conference attempts to clarify and highlight the indivisible yet vital link between soil organic carbon and the role that soil health plays in the sustainability of agricultural production and in the flow of ecosystem services. Nevertheless, the topics addressed by the Green Carbon Conference are not only related to the importance of soil organic carbon for the overall soil quality and health, but also include other sustainability issues intimately related to the role of soil carbon such as landscape scale ecosystem functions and services, climate change mitigation and carbon offset, and economic aspects. This Conference also seeks to alert and inform EU policy stakeholders and technical officers of the urgent need to adopt sustainable soil and production practices of Conservation Agriculture to contribute to the objectives of Europe 2020, the EU's growth strategy for the coming decades

Mobilizing Greater Crop and Land Potentials Sustainably

The supply side of the food security engine is the way we farm. The current engine of conventional tillage farming is faltering and needs to be replaced. This presentation will address supply side issues of agriculture to meet future agricultural demands for food and industry using the alternate no-till Conservation Agriculture (CA) paradigm (involving no-till farming with mulch soil cover and diversified cropping) that is able to raise productivity sustainably and efficiently, reduce inputs, regenerate degraded land, minimise soil erosion, and harness the flow of ecosystem services. CA is an ecosystems approach to farming capable of enhancing not only the economic and environmental performance of crop production and land management, but also promotes a mindset change for producing ‘more from less’, the key attitude towards sustainable production intensification. CA is now spreading globally in all continents at an annual rate of 10 Mha and covers some 157 Mha of cropland. Today global agriculture produces enough food to feed three times the current population of 7.21 billion. In 1976, when the world population was 4.15 billion, world food production far exceeded the amount necessary to feed that population. However, our urban and industrialised lifestyle leads to wastage of food of some 30%-40%, as well as waste of enormous amount of energy and protein while transforming crop-based food into animal-derived food; we have a higher proportion of people than ever before who are obese; we continue to degrade our ecosystems including much of our agricultural land of which some 400 Mha is reported to be abandoned due to severe soil and land degradation; and yields of staple cereals appear to have stagnated. These are signs of unsustainability at the structural level in the society, and it is at the structural level, for both supply side and demand side, that we need transformed mind sets about production, consumption and distribution. CA not only provides the possibility of increased crop yields for the low input smallholder farmer, it also provides a pro-poor rural and agricultural development model to support agricultural intensification in an affordable manner. For the high output farmer, it offers greater efficiency (productivity) and profit, resilience and stewardship. For farming anywhere, it addresses the root causes of agricultural land degradation, sub-optimal ecological crop and land potentials or yield ceilings, and poor crop phenotypic expressions or yield gaps. As national economies expand and diversify, more people become integrated into the economy and are able to access food. However, for those whose livelihoods continue to depend on agriculture to feed themselves and the rest of the world population, the challenge is for agriculture to produce the needed food and raw material for industry with minimum harm to the environment and the society, and to produce it with maximum efficiency and resilience against abiotic and biotic stresses, including those arising from climate change. There is growing empirical and scientific evidence worldwide that the future global supplies of food and agricultural raw materials can be assured sustainably at much lower environmental and economic cost by shifting away from conventional tillage-based food and agriculture systems to no-till CA-based food and agriculture systems. To achieve this goal will require effective national and global policy and institutional support (including research and education)

Effect of agronomic and environmental factors on CO2 emissions on a dryland rotation

Agriculture is a substantial source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in many countries. Conservation agriculture includes soil management systems that help to reduce CO2 emission levels. However, there are many factors involved in the production of these emissions such as soil management type and time at which the agriculture operations are performed, crop phenological state, the weather, and handling of the residue amongst others. In the long term, the relationships that exist between these factors seem to determine the balance of these emissions. In this study, we analyzed the influence of the soil management system as well as the climatology of the different seasons studied and the phenological state of the different crops implanted. For this purpose a field trial was conducted in Las Cabezas de San Juán (Seville). This pilot farm consisted of six experimental plots with an approximate area of 5 ha; conservation agriculture practices were employed in three of the six plots while traditional tillage management was used in the other three. Within these plots the three crops of the wheat-sunflower-legume rotation were tested simultaneously. The study was conducted over four agricultural seasons - 2009/10, 2010/11, 2011/12 and 2012/13. Each of these cropping seasons were characterised by very different rainfall amounts, registering a total of 814.4, 721.6, 268.2 and 676.4 l/m2, respectively. When we studied the evolution of emissions over four seasons, an increase could be observed for both management systems during the time in which the crops were established due to the roots respiration processes. These increases were heavily influenced by the rainfall recorded during the time in which the crop was in place. In the case of wheat, higher emissions were produced during the cultivation time of the first and fourth season during which 84% and 60% of the total rainfall of each season was recorded. These emissions were 9 and 5 kg CO2/ha for conventional tillage and no tillage, respectively for the 2009/10 season and 11.7 and 6.8 kg CO2/ha, respectively in the 2012/13 season. Conversely during the 2011/12 season, a season in which lower precipitation was registered, the higher emissions were comparatively minor with respect to the previous values, specifically 3.7 and 1.9 kg CO2/ha for non-tillage and conventional tillage

Towards Conservation Agriculture systems in Moldova

As the world population and food production demands rise, keeping agricultural soils and landscapes healthy and productive are of paramount importance to sustaining local and global food security and the flow of ecosystem services to society. The global population, expected to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050, will put additional pressure on the available land area and resources for agricultural production. Sustainable production intensification for food security is a major challenge to both industrialized and developing countries. The paper focuses on the results from long-term multi-factorial experiments involving tillage practices, crop rotations and fertilization to study the interactions amongst the treatments in the context of sustainable production intensification. The paper discusses the results in relation to reported performance of crops and soil quality in Conservation Agriculture systems that are based on no or minimum soil disturbance (no-till seeding and weeding), maintenance of soil mulch cover with crop biomass and cover crops, and diversified cropping systems involving annuals and perennials. Conservation Agriculture also emphasizes the necessity of an agro-ecosystems approach to the management of agricultural land for sustainable production intensification, as well as to the site-specificity of agricultural production. Arguments in favor of avoiding the use of soil tillage are discussed together with agro-ecological principles for sustainable intensification of agriculture. More interdisciplinary systems research is required to support the transformation of agriculture from the conventional tillage agriculture to a more sustainable agriculture based on the principles and practices of Conservation Agriculture, along with other complementary practices of integrated crop, nutrient, water, pest, energy and farm power management

Mobilizing Greater Crop and Land Potentials with Conservation Agriculture

The engine that supplies food and agricultural products is the way we farm. The current dominant engine of conventional tillage farming based on the Green Revolution agriculture mind-set is faltering and needs to be replaced to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the future food and agricultural demands by consumers and society. This chapter elaborates on the alternate no-till Conservation Agriculture (CA) paradigm (involving no-till seeding in soils with mulch cover and in diversified cropping systems). This new paradigm of CA is able to raise productivity sustainably and efficiently, reduce inputs, regenerate degraded land, minimize soil erosion, and harness the flow of ecosystem services. CA is an ecosystems approach to regenerative farming which is capable of enhancing the economic and environmental performance of crop production and land management that can contribute to achieving several SDGs. The new CA paradigm also promotes a mind-set change of producing ‘more from less’ inputs, the key attitude needed to move towards sustainable production based on agro-ecological intensification of output. CA is spreading globally in all continents at an annual rate of around 10 M ha of cropland. The current (in 2015/16) spread of CA is approximately 180 M ha, of which 48% is located in the Global South. CA not only provides the possibility of increased crop yields and profit for the low input smallholder farmer, it also provides a pro-poor rural and agricultural development model to support sustainable agricultural intensification in low income countries in an affordable manner for poverty alleviation, food security and economic development. However, for SDGs to contribute real lasting value to the quality of human life and to nature, the current and future human and ethical consequences of the uncontrolled consumer demands and pressures placed upon agricultural production by the food and agriculture system as a whole must be addressed

Effects of Zero Tillage (No-Till) Conservation Agriculture on soil physical and biological properties and their contributions to sustainability.

Not cultivating soil, rotating crops over the years, and leaving crop residues on the surface in the practice of zero tillage/conservation agriculture (ZT/CA) reverses the historically accelerating degradation of soil organic matter (SOM) and soil structure, while increasing soil biological activity by a factor of 2 to 4. The results of this are many: (a) not cultivating reduces soil compaction, leaving old root holes to facilitate internal drainage, averts the pulverization of soil aggregates and formation of pans, reduces draft power for planting and gives shelter, winter food and nesting sites for fauna, (b) crop residues on the surface practically eliminate wind and water erosion, reduce soil moisture loss through the mulch effect, slow spring warm-up (possibly offset by a lower specific heat demand with less water retention in surface soil) and act as a reserve of organically-compounded nutrients (as they decompose to humus), (c) more SOM means higher available water and nutrient retention, higher biological activity year round (enhancing biological controls), higher levels of water-stable aggregates and a positive carbon sink in incremental SOM. The positive impacts for society are: (i) more and cheaper food, (ii) reduced flood and drought-induced famine risks, (iii) a positive carbon sink in SOM and possible reductions in NO emissions, (iv) cleaner water and greater aquifer recharge due to reduced runoff, (v) cleaner air through effective elimination of dust as a product of cultivation (vi) less water pollution and greater aquifer recharge from reduced rainfall runoff, (vii) farm diesel consumption halved, (viii) reduced demand for (tropical) de-forestation, by permitting crop expansion on steeper lands, (ix) increased wildlife populations (skylarks, plovers, partridge and peccaries) and (x) an improved conservation mindset in farmers. It is notable that, in spite of successful practitioners in all European countries, mainstream adoption is still to come: Europe s ZT/CA area is 1.35 million hectares, while the world area is now some 125 million and growing at a rate of 7 million hectares per year. More scientific measurements of the benefits of this system are required, both to assist adoption and to trigger policy measures. In the EEC, CAP reform (greening) needs to consider making environmental services payments for these social benefits since a reduction in single farm payments is ineluctable and carbon footprint reduction is of the essence, in the face of constantly-rising fuel prices and the need to cut GHG emissions. Therefore, as the principal farm tool which offers an effective and immediate solution towards positive changes in soil quality, productivity and sustainability, ZT/CA adoption needs financial incentives, which have high economic and environmental returns to society