Conservation Agriculture-Based Sustainable Intensification to Achieve Food, Water and Energy Security While Reducing Farmers’ Environmental Footprint in the Eastern Gangetic Plains of South Asia

Abstract

Traditional rice-based crop production in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP) region of South Asia are energy, water, and labor intensive and inefficient, with relatively low productivity and profitability. Additionally, crop management in these systems typically does not consider the emission of CO₂-equivalent greenhouse gases, which is often relatively high. The EGP is currently a highly impoverished region, but it has natural resources sufficient to become a leading food-producing region in South Asia. Conservation agriculture-based sustainable intensification (CASI) crop management practices improve crop productivity and profitability while reducing energy, water and labor requirements, and greenhouse gas emissions. The introduction of CASI practices within villages and districts of the EGP provides opportunities for farming households to sustainably diversify and/or intensify their crop production. It also enables the micro-entrepreneurship and employment opportunities within rural communities.

In on-farm experiments, we compared the performance of traditional and improved management practices in rice-based cropping systems. We found that CASI management practices improved crop grain yields by up to 10% and reduced labor demand by up to 50%, while increasing water productivity (up to 19%) and energy productivity (up to 26%). Combined, these results reduced the cost of crop production under CASI by up to 22% compared to traditional practice, and increased gross margins in general by 12–32%. Concurrently, CO₂-equivalent emissions from CASI management were lower than those from traditional management by between 10% and 17%.

The method of implementing and testing CASI management practices was important: this participatory research was embedded within existing farmer support groups, which served as hubs to support collaborative participatory research and to connect farmers and researchers with other important stakeholders as needed. An actively enabling policy environment was necessary to support CASI uptake and to facilitate outscaling at scale outside research areas.