ABSTRACT
Persistent income from agriculture is most important for sustaining the farming sector. Conservation agriculture (CA) is a resource-saving agricultural production system that aims to achieve production intensification and high yields while enhancing the natural resource base through compliance with three interrelated principles, along with other good production practices of plant nutrition and pest management. CA offers an opportunity for arresting and reversing the downward spiral of resource degradation, decreasing cultivation costs and making agriculture more resource – use-efficient, competitive and sustainable. The socio economic aspects should have special focus on the small and marginal farmers and agriculture labourers. CA is largely promoted as one of the few win–win technologies affordable to farmers, in the sense that potentially it improves farmers’ yields (in the long term) at the same time conserving the environment.
