Conservation Agriculture Core Training Materials

Conservation Agriculture Facilitator’s Guidebook - 2020/04/20

The editable source documents (.docx and .pub) of these materials are available in many other languages from the CFGB database.  The source documents are updated periodically so check here for the most current formats.  We encourage you to adapt the source for your purposes.

Conservation Agriculture (CA) has spread in the past 40 years to cover 105 million hectares of farmland worldwide (ACT 2008). CA’s effectiveness in retaining soil moisture, improving soil quality, lowering input costs and producing stable, high yields of crops leaves little doubt that it will be central to creating food security in a world of increasing population and climate uncertainty.

Unfortunately, however, the adoption of CA among small-scale farmers has lagged far behind that of large-scale mechanized farmers. The challenges hindering the adoption of CA among small-scale farmers include the great diversity of crops and farming approaches that make standardization of CA technologies virtually impossible. Overly rigid extension methods and materials further hinder the spread of CA technologies when they promote a one-size-fits-all approach.

This Conservation Agriculture Facilitator’s Guidebook is designed to address these challenges by building adaptation and diversity into every aspect of its production and dissemination. The materials presented herein are agronomically sound, but simple enough to be understood by farmers with little formal education. By reproducing them in electronic format only, without copyright, we hope that they will be shared widely, customized, and improved by each Project Field Officer that uses them.

Be sure to download the Farmer Booklet that goes with the training

Conservation Agriculture - Core Lesson Farmer Booklet - 2020/04/20

The editable source documents (.docx and .pub) of these materials are available in many other languages from the CFGB database.  The source documents are updated periodically so check here for the most current formats.  We encourage you to adapt the source for your purposes.

Why Use Conservation Agriculture? .................................... 3
Minimizing Soil Disturbance ............................................... 4
Importance of Soil Cover ..................................................... 8
Planting with Precision ....................................................... 14
Cover Crops ........................................................................ 16
Controlling Weeds with CA ............................................... 22
Crop Residue Management ................................................ 25