Overview of the Worldwide Spread of Conservation Agriculture

Abstract

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 globally as a new paradigm for the 21st century. The data presented in this paper has been collected by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations from several sources including estimates made by ministries of agriculture, by farmer organizations, and well-informed individuals in research or development organizations; they provide an overview of CA adoption and spread by country, as well as the extent of CA adoption by continent. CA systems, comprising no or minimum mechanical soil disturbance, organic mulch soil cover, and crop species diversification, in conjunction with other good practices of crop and production management, are now (in 2013) practiced globally on about 157 M ha, corresponding to about 11% of field cropland, in all continents and most land-based agricultural ecologies, including in the various temperate environments. This change constitutes a difference of some 47% globally since 2008/09 when the spread was recorded as 106 M ha. The current total of 157 M ha represents an increase in adoption of CA by more countries but the estimate is on the conservative side as the updated database does not capture all the CA cropland. 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 the area had grown to 72 M ha. In the last 10 years CA cropland has expanded at an average rate of more than 8.3 M ha per year and since 2008/2009 at the rate of some 10 M ha per year, showing the increased interest of farmers and national governments in this alternate production concept and method. Adoption has been intense mainly in North and South America as well as in Australia and Asia, and more recently in Europe and Africa where the awareness of and support for CA is on the increase. The paper presents an update of the adoption of CA since 2008/09.