Abstract
Conservation agriculture (CA)—a farming strategy based on three principles of minimum soil disturbance (or direct seeding), permanent vegetative soil cover and crop rotation—is seen as the alternative to tillage, with multiple benefits with regard to productivity and sustainability. The first two core principles of CA call for specialised machinery for seeding on unploughed fields with residues, management of cover crops or crop residues and weed management. With two thirds of CA being about mechanisation and use of specialised machinery, it is not surprising that close to 97 % of the 155 million ha under CA worldwide is large-scale commercial farming. Direct seeding and management of soil cover are also the most difficult to implement without access to appropriate farm machinery and, in essence, are the weakest links in the CA adoption chain. Contrary to the farmer-ownership model, a farmer-to-farmer CA service provision model is a preferred approach to enable smallholders’ access to farm machinery. This chapter provides an overview of the essential machinery requirements for the different farm operations involved in CA. Regional-specific issues with emphasis on developing countries are also discussed, and pragmatic solutions of vital interest to researchers, academia and policy makers globally are proposed.
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Mkomwa, S., Kaumbutho, P., Makungu, P. (2015). Farm Machinery for Conservation Agriculture. In: Farooq, M., Siddique, K. (eds) Conservation Agriculture. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11620-4_5
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