Aligning Conservation Agriculture among various disciplines in South Africa

Abstract

Conservation agriculture (CA) is widely acknowledged as a set of management principles that support soil conservation (Govaerts et al. 2009;Smith et al. 2017;Kassam et al. 2019). The term CA is loosely used among South African farmers, industry experts and academia to refer to any action that has soil-conservation goals. However, this inaccurate reference causes confusion and may lead to misperceptions of CA as simply a sustainable crop-production system. The principles of CA include minimum soil disturbance, protecting the soil with an organic soil cover, and including a diversity of crops, either in crop rotation or association (Hobbs et al. 2008). Management principles can be broadly applicable to many farming systems and crops. In South Africa, CA is used successfully for field crops under rainfed conditions, particularly in smallholder systems but also in commercial and broadacre production systems. The term CA has been less frequently used in reference to systems involving crops grown under irrigation, permanent (i.e. orchards and vineyards) and semi-permanent crops (i.e. sugarcane) or to cultivated pastures. Yet, the management principles of CA are reported to be largely universal and could be applied in most production systems (Kassam et al. 2019).To share and exchange CA research experiences and lessons, and to identify research gaps in the field of CA in South Africa, a workshop was facilitated with a wide range of representatives from across the CA community. The broad objectives of the workshop were to: i) facilitate participants' sharing of information and experiences focusing on lessons learnt with regard to the contribution of CA to sustainable crop production and improved food security; ii) identify key issues in the development, promotion and adoption of CA in commercial and subsistence farming; iii) involve participants' in collective discussion of key challenges faced within CA practices; iv) link the challenges to underlying knowledge gaps and plan collaborative approaches to best address these gaps (in the form of concept notes that might be the basis of future research proposals); and v) promote networking to support the scaling-up of CA in South Africa. In accordance with information gathered from participants in the workshop, this article aims to align approaches to CA among various disciplines in South Africa and outlines a research agenda for CA in South Africa. MethodsA workshop was held in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on 23 January 2019, and attended by approximately 200 delegates from universities and other tertiary educational institutions, research institutions, government, and private companies involved in CA in South Africa. The workshop was structured to have an opening session where the aim and objectives of the workshop were shared. This was followed by eight

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