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What is Conservation Agriculture?

All around the world, conventional farming methods have led to significant declines in soil health, threatening our food security, environmental sustainability, and economic development. To feed our growing population, and ensure Rwanda’s food sovereignty, we must break away from conventional agriculture’s status quo.

Today, RICA is leading a new movement in conservation agriculture, a farming philosophy that focuses on building soil health and ensuring that agriculture can be productive, sustainable, and profitable over the long term. Conservation agriculture encompasses a number of interlinked farming methods that, when implemented together, can restore the soil and lead to better food and nutrition security.

Principles of Conservation Agriculture

Minimize soil disturbance
  1. No-tillage during land preparation for previously utilized land.
  2. Using herbicides to get rid of unwanted shrubs, grasses before planting and/or weeds after planting.
  3. Slashing or rolling the weeds before flowering so that they dry before planting the crop.
  4. Planting directly in the mulch for cereals and legumes.
  5. Planting in basins or half-moon planting for tuber crops.
  6. Zonal ripping to break hard pans
  7. Minimum soil disturbance to remove trees in opening up new land.
  8. Using hula hoes for weeding
    Weed Managment
Maintain soil cover
  1. Leaving crop residues in the harvested field to cover the soil surface to prevent soil erosion.
    Keeping residues in the field
  2. Use living plant materials as soil cover e.g. cover crops like Mucuna, to cover the soil between crop plants during the season or between crop seasons.
  3. Terminate the cover crop before full maturity in preparation for planting the main crop.
  4. Use mulch from grasses or tree shavings if available and affordable.
    Mulching
Diversify cropping systems
  1. Practice crop rotation in which deep-rooted crops are rotated with shallow-rooted crops e.g. cereal-legumes.
    Crop rotation
  2. Practicing intercropping with different plant families in an orderly spatial manner e.g. perennial with annual crops
    Intercropping
Economic application of nutrients (fertilizers, lime)
  1. Apply mineral fertilizers based on plant needs and soil status (if available)
    Using inorganic fertilizers
  2. Apply farmyard manure or compost to increase soil organic matter and nutrients.
    Organic manure
  3. Plant legumes as cover crop or main crop rotation for biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) and nutrient build-up.
  4. Apply Integrated soil fertility management through the combined use of organic (manure, compost) and inorganic (mineral) fertilizers.
    Organic fertilizers
  5. Apply lime to manage soil pH, improve soil structure, increase release of nitrogen, and increase earthworm activity.
    Liming
Efficient usage of pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides

  1. Prioritize Integrated Pest Management (IPM) technologies where available to control pests and diseases.
    Integrated pest management (IPM)

  2. Apply pesticides and fungicides judiciously only when pests appear to cause economic damage.Pesticide application
  3. Avoiding repeated growing of crops of same family in same field to break pest cycle between subsequent crops and prevent disease buildup.
    Crop rotation
  4. Use pest and disease resistant or tolerant varieties as much as possible.Planting improved varieties
Efficient water use in irrigation for profit maximization
  1. Use irrigation efficient methods, proper irrigation scheduling following crop water-use needs.
    Irrigation
  2. Maintain cover through mulch, cover crops to reduce evaporation and conserve moisture.
    Erosion control
  3. Dry farming -utilizing moisture stored in the soil from previous season other than irrigation.
  4. Plant drought-tolerant crops varieties especially in dry or short seasons.
    Planting improved varieties

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Integrate cropping and livestock systems.
  1. Mixed farming: combine both crops and livestock on the same farm, but in distinct areas.
  2. Silvopastoral systems: combine trees or agroforestry components with livestock grazing. Silvopastoral systems promote carbon sequestration, mitigate climate change impacts, and improve the overall ecological resilience of the farming landscape.Adopting agroforestry in cropping systems
  3. Agro-pastoral systems integrate crop production and livestock grazing in the same area. Livestock, such as cattle, sheep, or goats, are allowed to graze on fallow or harvested crop fields, consuming crop residues and weeds while putting manure on the soil.
Manage crop and livestock systems to minimize environmental impacts and increase biodiversity.
  1. Handling and composting of food and animal wastes (from dairy, poultry, swine, and food processing) to prevent pollution.
  2. Utilize composted waste on farms as manure.
  3. Utilize food remains and waste such as bones, eggshells as inputs for feeding livestock e.g. swine.
  4. Use organic inputs in the form of manure, composts, plant residues, to build organic matter which provide food for soil organisms. This help build soil life hence increased biodiversity.

Note: Italicized sentences with a check mark represent Good Agricultural Practices, which are variations of the practices in CA under each CA principle.

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