Conservation Agriculture has the potential to enhance soil fertility and reduce erosion across 260,000 hectares (ha) of fragile and degraded cereal land in Tunisia, according to a joint study by the country’s National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRAT) and ICARDA.
A Zero Tillage seeder on fragile and degraded cereal land in North East Tunisia (Photo credit: INGC Tunisia).
Conservation Agriculture (CA) – the practice of not plowing and leaving crop residue in fields for enhanced soil fertility and moisture conservation – was first introduced to Tunisia in 1999, where it was pilot-tested on 11 farms in the country’s North-East. While the area cultivated under CA has since grown, the practice is still applied on only 12,000 ha of agricultural land – an area distributed among 200 farmers and operated by some 102 seeders.
