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ABSTRACT
Conservation Agriculture (CA) comprises the practical application of three interlinked principles, namely: no or minimum mechanical soil disturbance, biomass mulch soil cover and crop species diversification, in conjunction with other complementary good agricultural practices of integrated crop and production management. In 2015/16, CA was practised globally on about 180 M ha of cropland, corresponding to about 12.5% of the total global cropland. In 2008/09, the spread of CA was reported to be about 106 M ha. This change constitutes an increase of some 69% globally since 2008/09. In 2015/16, CA adoption was reported by 78 countries, an increase in adoption by 42 more countries since 2008/09, respectively. The average annual rate of global expansion of CA cropland area since 2008/2009 has been some 10.5 M ha. The largest extents of adoption are in South and North America, followed by Australia and New Zealand, Asia, Russia and Ukraine, Europe and Africa.
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge with sincere thanks the assistance of many colleagues throughout the world for their help in providing the CA information of their countries. We also express our gratitude to Mr. Amit Kolhi of AQUASTAT in the management of the CA database at FAO. Special thanks to the Editor, Dr. Michael Brett-Crowther for his wonderful help.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.