A Survey of Conservation Agriculture in the World with Focus on Argentina as a Successful Case

Conservation agriculture is a relatively new system aimed at enhancing productivity and achieving sustainable agriculture. It represents the main components of an alternative pattern of farm production that necessitates radical changes in production methods. It is the objective of the present study to explore the status of conservation agriculture on a global scale and to investigate its current status in Argentina as one of its successful examples. The research method employed is ‘best practice research’ that is way between systematic review and narrative review. Results indicate that conservation agriculture is winning public acceptance and gaining ground as an emerging system due to its potentials for enhancing productivity and efficiency, reducing production costs, and increasing profitability as well as its higher flexibility toward environmental stresses, soil erosion and degradation, and increased production of soil organic matter; as such the cultivated area under conservation farming rose from 2.8 million ha in 1973 to more than 180 million ha in 2016 the world over. In Argentina, where private associations have played a key role in its development and promotion, conservation agriculture has come to be recognized as one of the most important developments in agriculture over the last few decades. A final finding of the present study indicates that public acceptance of conservation farming presupposes a change in the behavior of all the stakeholders and that such tools as testing, learning, accepting, and adapting play vital roles in its success.