Conservation agriculture

• Conservation agriculture maintains a permanent or semi-permanent organic soil cover. This can be a growing crop or a dead mulch. Its function is to protect the soil physically from sun, rain and wind and to feed soil biota.
  
• The soil micro-organisms and soil fauna take over the tillage function and soil nutrient balancing. Mechanical tillage disturbs this process. Therefore, zero or minimum tillage and direct seeding are important elements of conservation agriculture.
  
• A varied crop rotation is also important to avoid disease and pest problems.
  
• Livestock production can be fully integrated into conservation agriculture, by making use of the recycling of nutrients. This reduces the environmental problems caused by concentrated intensive livestock production.
  
• Globally, conservation agriculture is currently practised on about 58 million hectares of land, from the tropics almost to the Arctic Circle: mostly in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Canada and Paraguay.

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