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Conservation Agriculture under different Agro-ecosystems of India. Tek Sapkota , R K Gupta and ML Jat. Outline. Challenges of Agriculture CA as paradigm shift in production system Major AEZ, soil types, crops and production challenges
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Conservation Agriculture under different Agro-ecosystems of India TekSapkota, R K Gupta and ML Jat
Outline • Challenges of Agriculture • CA as paradigm shift in production system • Major AEZ, soil types, crops and production challenges • Strategic interventions to address the major production challenges from the stand point of CA • Some examples of CA based management to address the production challenges • Take home messages
Triple Challenge of Agriculture • Increase Production • Adapt to climatic variability • Mitigation of climate change
Challenge of Agriculture: Food Security “…..feeding a world population of 9.1 billion people in 2050 would require raising overall food production by some 70% between 2005 and 2050 Production in the developing countries would need to almost double……” “In a world of plenty, no one, not a single person, should go hungry. But almost 1 billion still do not have enough to eat. I want to see an end to hunger everywhere within my lifetime.” – Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary-General
Challenge of Agriculture: Climate variability risk Blue: extreme risk, Green: medium to low risk, Map source: Maplecroft
Challenge of Agr: GHG emission reduction Forestry – mainly CO2 from deforestation for more agriculture Agriculture + forestry: 30% of anthropogenic GHG emissions IPCC 4th Assessment Report (2007)
Ag production in India further constrained by: • Natural resources degradation (water, soil quality) • Input : output ratio and cost (decreasing FP) • Increasing cost of energy and other resources • Competition of Ag sector with other sector for energy, water and other resources • Land holding- getting smaller and fragmented • Agricultural work force- farmers age?
Paradigm Shifts in our production system From To • Excessive tillage and soil erosion • Residue burning or incorporation • Uneven field levels • Free-wheeling of farm machinery • Green manuring (incorporated) • Use of ex-situ FYM/composts • Crop based management • Single or sole crops • Environmentally detrimental • Drastically reduced tillage/erosion • Surface retention of residues • Precisely leveled fields • Controlled traffic • Brown manuring (surface drying) • In-situUse of organics/composts • System based management • Diversification: Inter-relay crop • Environmental friendly
CA to address triple challenges faced by Agriculture Contributes to increase food production, adapt to climatic variability and have large co-benefit in mitigation CA
Conservation Agriculture defined Conservation agriculture systems 1 2 3 Permanent organic soil cover (retention of adequate levels of crop residues on the soil surface) Diversified crop rotations including cover crops (to help moderate possible weed, disease and pest problems) Minimum mechanical soil disturbance (the minimum soil disturbance necessary to sow the seed)
Summary of the major challenges, their cause and technologies to address them Summarize the problems in major category
Summary of the major challenges, their cause and technologies to address them
Some examples of CA based mgmt to address production challenges in different AEZ
CA beats the heat (NWIGP) a b a b Source: Jat et al (2012)
CA requires less water (across IGP west to east) Source: Results compiled from on station and farmers’ field trials in IGP
Enhancing Productivity of Cotton-Wheat system • Early and short stature cotton cultivars • Slight alteration planters to increase clearance height to plant wheat over the cotton
Total estimated GHG emission in wheat production Emission per ha (A) and per Mg wheat averaged over two years (B) under different nutrient management strategies in conventional and no-tillage wheat production systems
Take Home Message • Transformation in Ag. Production: food security, adaptation and mitigation • CA is resource saving production system combined with other interrelated production practices such as IPM, INM, IWM etc • CA based production system should be formulated based on local pedo-climatic and socio-economic condition-but the basic principles remain the same • CA based management has been successful under various production system of different AEZ of India • CA is knowledge intensive and adoption may be gradual • Enabling policy environment needed
http://conservacion.cimmyt.org Thank you for your attention