Conservation Agriculture: Innovations, Constraints and Strategies for Adoption

Untenable use of factors of production is causing severe land degradation and food insecurity problems especially in developing world. Land degradation threatens the ecosystem health and food security worldwide and will remain high priority on international agenda. Conservation agriculture (CA) innovations offer a new paradigm for agricultural research and development. While examining the total innovation-decision process, one can see how the farmers observe innovations (knowledge), relate to images and message within technological innovations (persuasion), formulate a want for item (decision), actively pursue the desire for item (implementation), and ultimately decide whether future uses of technologies / are desirable (confirmation). The adoption of CA innovations can be facilitated by locally identified and specially trained group leaders or by promoters. For the success, farmers will need to be in forefront for helping in identification, development and deployment of CA innovations. Developing and promoting RCT systems is highly demanding in terms of knowledge base. This will call for greatly enhanced capacity of scientists to address the prevailing problems / constraints from a systems perspective and be able to work in close partnerships with farmers and other stakeholders. There is also need to strengthen the knowledge and information-sharing mechanisms. Improvement in coordination amongst various stakeholders like research, extension service, farmers, service providers, agricultural machinery, and manufacturers for transfer of technologies will play a pivotal role in accelerating the Conservation Agriculture.