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Productivity limits and potentials of the principles of conservation agriculture

Nature volume 517, pages 365–368 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

One of the primary challenges of our time is to feed a growing and more demanding world population with reduced external inputs and minimal environmental impacts, all under more variable and extreme climate conditions in the future1,2,3,4. Conservation agriculture represents a set of three crop management principles that has received strong international support to help address this challenge5,6, with recent conservation agriculture efforts focusing on smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia7. However, conservation agriculture is highly debated, with respect to both its effects on crop yields8,9,10 and its applicability in different farming contexts7,11,12,13. Here we conduct a global meta-analysis using 5,463 paired yield observations from 610 studies to compare no-till, the original and central concept of conservation agriculture, with conventional tillage practices across 48 crops and 63 countries. Overall, our results show that no-till reduces yields, yet this response is variable and under certain conditions no-till can produce equivalent or greater yields than conventional tillage. Importantly, when no-till is combined with the other two conservation agriculture principles of residue retention and crop rotation, its negative impacts are minimized. Moreover, no-till in combination with the other two principles significantly increases rainfed crop productivity in dry climates, suggesting that it may become an important climate-change adaptation strategy for ever-drier regions of the world. However, any expansion of conservation agriculture should be done with caution in these areas, as implementation of the other two principles is often challenging in resource-poor and vulnerable smallholder farming systems, thereby increasing the likelihood of yield losses rather than gains. Although farming systems are multifunctional, and environmental and socio-economic factors need to be considered14,15,16, our analysis indicates that the potential contribution of no-till to the sustainable intensification of agriculture is more limited than often assumed.

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Figure 1: Comparison of yield in no-till versus conventional tillage systems in relation to the other two principles of conservation agriculture.
Figure 2: Comparison of rainfed crop yield in no-till versus conventional tillage systems in relation to the other two principles of conservation agriculture as a function of climate.
Figure 3: Comparison of yield in no-till versus conventional tillage systems in relation to the other two principles of conservation agriculture over time.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the National Key Science and Technology Project of China for supporting X.Q.L. with grant number 2014ZX07101-012.

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Author notes

  1. Cameron M. Pittelkow

    Present address: Present address: Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.,

  2. Cameron M. Pittelkow and Xinqiang Liang: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, 95616, California, USA

    Cameron M. Pittelkow, Bruce A. Linquist, Mark E. Lundy & Chris van Kessel

  2. College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Xinqiang Liang

  3. Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, 86011, Arizona, USA

    Kees Jan van Groenigen & Natasja van Gestel

  4. Department of Environmental Systems Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH-Zurich, Zurich 8092, Switzerland,

    Juhwan Lee & Johan Six

  5. United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Soil and Water Management Unit, St Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA,

    Rodney T. Venterea

  6. Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, University of Minnesota, St Paul, 55108, Minnesota, USA

    Rodney T. Venterea

Authors
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Contributions

C.v.K., B.A.L., and X.Q.L. conceived the project. All authors contributed to the literature search, except N.v.G. and R.T.V. C.M.P., X.Q.L., J.L., K.J.v.G., B.A.L., and M.E.L. extracted data from publications and contributed to construction of the database. C.M.P., X.Q.L., K.J.v.G., and N.v.G. conducted analyses. C.M.P. and X.Q.L. wrote the manuscript draft and all authors contributed to interpretation of the results and writing of the final paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cameron M. Pittelkow.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Data

Database of yield comparisons used in the meta-analysis. (XLSX 470 kb)

Supplementary Information

List of references for publications used in the meta-analysis. (PDF 348 kb)

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Pittelkow, C., Liang, X., Linquist, B. et al. Productivity limits and potentials of the principles of conservation agriculture. Nature 517, 365–368 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13809

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