I believe environmental and economic benefits can go hand-in-hand with the right systems approach for food security.
Today we are in the situation where we have to achieve crop production growth to meet the needs of a growing population. We cannot expand on marginal lands. The only way crop productions can grow is by agriculture intensification, which comes down to i) growing more crops in the growing season (shorter fallow periods), and ii) increasing the efficiency of use of production inputs.
To fit more crops in the rotation, timely planting of crops is essential. For this reason, doing without tillage (NT) would seem the most appropriate solution.
To do NT without cover crops would, in most cases, lead to problems of soil compaction, poor plant nutrition, and high weed incidence. For this reason, a diversified crop rotation and, where possible, growing the main crop in a living cover crop (which allows to use as much as a fraction of a dose of herbicide) would be advisable.
Diversifying the crop rotation in an undisturbed soil allows the soil food web to be an active player in landscape processes. The macrofauna is active. For example, earthworms moving into the soil build permanent galleries that allow water to infiltrate and roots to grow more rapidly. The mesofauna is active, and accelerates decomposition of the organic material. Soil microorganisms are also active, and break down carbon structures releasing any excess nutrients into the soil in forms that plants can use (mineralization). At the same time, microorganisms reorganize carbon structures in other relatively stable forms (sequestration) that act as a sort of sponge that retains more water and nutrients for later plant uptake, thus increasing crops resilience to dry spells.
I don’t believe that all this is easy. The right crop combination needs to be identified, expertise to be built up, and the availability of the right technology at accessible costs to be guaranteed. In the absence of any of these elements, delay in achieving tangible results will build up frustration.
What I believe is that CA is an environmentally and economically viable system. There will be cases where it will allow triple wins in climate (adaptation and/or mitigation), environment and productivity. When it will be able to bring environmental advantages, it will bring them as side effects of crop production, which is why it accounts for the technology with the lowest costs for mitigation. There will be cases where the mitigation potential will be low or absent, and cases where less than 2 wins will be possible. But I cannot think of cases where CA will be a “climate-dumb” or a “dumb” agriculture approach.
I believe environmental and economic benefits can go hand-in-hand with the right systems approach for food security.
Today we are in the situation where we have to achieve crop production growth to meet the needs of a growing population. We cannot expand on marginal lands. The only way crop productions can grow is by agriculture intensification, which comes down to i) growing more crops in the growing season (shorter fallow periods), and ii) increasing the efficiency of use of production inputs.
To fit more crops in the rotation, timely planting of crops is essential. For this reason, doing without tillage (NT) would seem the most appropriate solution.
To do NT without cover crops would, in most cases, lead to problems of soil compaction, poor plant nutrition, and high weed incidence. For this reason, a diversified crop rotation and, where possible, growing the main crop in a living cover crop (which allows to use as much as a fraction of a dose of herbicide) would be advisable.
Diversifying the crop rotation in an undisturbed soil allows the soil food web to be an active player in landscape processes. The macrofauna is active. For example, earthworms moving into the soil build permanent galleries that allow water to infiltrate and roots to grow more rapidly. The mesofauna is active, and accelerates decomposition of the organic material. Soil microorganisms are also active, and break down carbon structures releasing any excess nutrients into the soil in forms that plants can use (mineralization). At the same time, microorganisms reorganize carbon structures in other relatively stable forms (sequestration) that act as a sort of sponge that retains more water and nutrients for later plant uptake, thus increasing crops resilience to dry spells.
I don’t believe that all this is easy. The right crop combination needs to be identified, expertise to be built up, and the availability of the right technology at accessible costs to be guaranteed. In the absence of any of these elements, delay in achieving tangible results will build up frustration.
What I believe is that CA is an environmentally and economically viable system. There will be cases where it will allow triple wins in climate (adaptation and/or mitigation), environment and productivity. When it will be able to bring environmental advantages, it will bring them as side effects of crop production, which is why it accounts for the technology with the lowest costs for mitigation. There will be cases where the mitigation potential will be low or absent, and cases where less than 2 wins will be possible. But I cannot think of cases where CA will be a “climate-dumb” or a “dumb” agriculture approach.