Advances in Conservation Agriculture Volume 2: Practice and Benefits

"What Dr Samuel Johnson did for English, Professor Amir Kassam has done for Conservation Agriculture (CA). He is eminently well qualified and has enlisted more than a hundred battle-hardened champions to contribute 26 chapters amounting to over a thousand scholarly pages. The content is formidable. Volume one, Systems and Science, embraces: the need for CA; global developments; soil health and landscape management; the roles of minimum soil disturbance, mulch and cover crops; crops and cropping systems, vegetable systems, perennial systems; integration of cropping and livestock; mechanization; certification; institutional and policy support. Volume two, Practice and Benefits, includes management of crops and cropping systems, soil, weeds, insect pests and disease, nutrients, carbon, and biodiversity; climate change mitigation and adaptation; benefits to farmers and society; ecosystem services; and rehabilitation of degraded farmland…This book can change the future."review by David Dent in International Journal of Environmental Studies This collection reviews ways of optimising Conservation Agricultural (CA) practices and their benefits. Chapters summarise research on optimising soil management, crop nutrition and irrigation, as well as weed, insect pest and disease management. The book also reviews ways of optimising the environmental and social benefits of adopting CA practices. Chapters discuss carbon and biodiversity management, the ways CA can promote ecosystem services as well as the use of life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques to monitor and improve CA. There are also chapters on improving the economic and broader social benefits of CA for farming communities.