2nd Africa Congress on Conservation Agriculture:
Supporting the Malabo Declaration and Agenda 2063
Currently, the demand from global agriculture is to increase the quantity and quality of food and agriculture production, taking care of environment, using less fossil fuel and purchased inputs, promoting biodiversity, efficiency, resilience, and climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Africa as a whole is a recent comer to the implementation of advanced technological, organizational and institutional innovations that increase the competitiveness and productivity of environmentally friendly farming systems. Led by the large-scale commercial farmers in South Africa and in other African countries, there are now several countries in Africa such as Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe that have made strategic advances in the upscaling of smart smallholder farming.
By 2050, Africa must double food production to feed its population that is expected to increase by some 115% within the same period. However, some 98% of the current crop production in Africa is managed under the conventional tillage agriculture systems, which is known to degrade the agricultural land resources and the environment, are inefficient in terms of resource use and the delivery of ecosystem services, and contribute to global warming.
The intensive crop production of cereals, pulses and oilseeds in the large-scale commercial farming in South Africa is also associated with pastures and other fodder crops for intensive livestock production. This modern agriculture is based on what is internationally known as Conservation Agriculture (CA). CA is a No-Till System with continuous no or minimum mechanical soil disturbance, permanently covered soils (with biomass), and diversified cropping system with crops grown in rotations or associations, along with good agricultural practices of integrated crop, soil health, nutrient, water, pest, farm power, labour management, and trees and livestock where appropriate.
CA systems are known to: reduce soil erosion and degradation; improve rainwater capture and storage in the soil and increases its use efficiency; improve and maintain soil health; promote nutrient, water and carbon cycling; reduce GHG emissions and increase carbon sequestration; and allow greater and more stable farm output and factor productivity.
Science and technology development are crucial for meeting the challenge to increase production while taking care of the environment and human health. Despite the ongoing discussions by
scientists, policy makers and others on how to feed the increasing population on this planet, farmers are not involved centrally in such discussions. The Global CA Community with more than 40 years of field experience and scientific evidence shows that this revolution began with farmers. The scientist community validated and expanded the technology later, and research on CA continues to generate new knowledge for improving the performance of CA systems. However, the progress to enable farmers and society to benefit from CA systems has been uneven, with some continents such as Africa, Asia and Europe yet to take full advantage of CA systems.
The area under Conservation Agriculture in Africa in 2015/16 was 1.4 M ha. This represents an increase of some 180% since 2008/09. However, this area comprises only 1.32% of the total cropland in the continent, and some 2 million farmers in more than 20 countries practice CA. Therefore, it is the objective of this Second Africa Congress on Conservation Agriculture (2ACCA) to demonstrate that Conservation Agriculture is actually the best approach to mitigate climate change and to adapt to the effects of climate change, contribute to food security, promote resilience and biodiversity and, with this, help to sustain the planet.
It is also the objective of 2ACCA to show the need of having adequate policies and applied prospective research to take decisions at the same roundtable with farmers. With 233 million people in Africa suffering hunger, and most of them living in agricultural areas and associated with smallholder family farming, policy makers have an important role of providing the support these farmers need to adopt CA. In order to accomplish the goal of eradicating hunger, there is ample scientific and empirical evidence to show that supportive gender-sensitive policies in the agricultural sector pay off better than in other sectors when it comes to issues of food security and rural poverty alleviation.
The 2ACCA will bring together politicians, farmers, policy makers, service providers, scientists and educationalist from Africa and the rest of world, along with financing organizations, and others stakeholders to identify the best solutions for all regions to support the Malabo Declaration and Agenda 2063. The 2ACCA, as the forum for the continental Conservation Agriculture Community to support the transformation of African agriculture, will be organized and consolidated as one of the most important meeting on the continent dealing with agricultural change as desired by the Malabo Declaration and Agenda 2063.
The Congress facilities include a plenary hall for panels and keynote speakers, five workshop rooms, an indoor exhibition hall, and an open park for machinery exhibitions.
The appointment is for October 9-12, 2018; Birchwood Hotel, Johannesburg, South Africa.
For further information visit: www.africacacongress.org or www.act-africa.org
Alternatively, Email: cacongress@act-africa.org or helpdesk@act-africa.org
