Conservation Agriculture in the USA

Publication date: 07/02/2022
Extent: 30 pages

Contributions by: Sjoerd W. Duiker, Penn State University, USA

Chapter synopsis: Climate and soils determine where crop production is concentrated in the US. The climate is changing and conservation agriculture (CA) will be critical to guarantee sustainable soil and water management in the future. This chapter reviews evidences of a foundation of CA based agriculture in pre-Columbian agriculture, how this changed when European colonists introduced plow-based monoculture systems that led to the Dust Bowl, the largest environmental and social disaster in U.S. history. This disaster led to formation of an institutional support infrastructure to develop and implement more sustainable soil management, and led to the development of modern CA systems. The chapter also shows statistics of the adoption of CA in the previous decades and discuss threats and opportunities for CA and directions for future research.

DOI: 10.19103/AS.2021.0088.03