Download Free Save And Grow A Technical Guide To Agricultural Practices In Zambia Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Save And Grow A Technical Guide To Agricultural Practices In Zambia and write the review.

This guide has been developed for extension officers in both the public and the private, including those interested in agricultural development in Zambia. The goal of this manual is to serve as a tool that allows readers to access up to date information about various agricultural practices and their advantages and disadvantages. There are many organisations in Zambia that have programs that aim towards sustainable development in the agricultural sector. Amongst these programs, there are many different approaches to the goal of improving livelihoods. Although these various programs have good reasons for promoting their specific methods, this manual aims to take an independent stance to portray what all of them offer and why. This manual also includes significant information about new approaches and traditional farmer practices or conventional farming methods. The central theme in this manual is that there can never be only one way to achieve a goal under such diverse conditions as are found in agriculture. Although a certain amount of benefit can be gained by rigid guidelines to agricultural practice (for example a specific crop spacing, tillage method or fertilizer recommendation), the diverse factors that affect peoples’ decisions relate to economic, social and environmental conditions make such guidelines impractical in many cases.
The book offers a rich toolkit of relevant, adoptable ecosystem-based practices that can help the world's 500 million smallholder farm families achieve higher productivity, profitability and resource-use efficiency while enhancing natural capital.
FAO’s best-selling 2011 publication, Save and Grow, proposed a new paradigm of agriculture, one that is both highly productive and environmentally sustainable. This new book looks at the application of “Save and Grow” practices and technologies to production of the world’s key food security crops – maize, rice and wheat. With examples drawn from developing countries worldwide, it shows how eco-friendly farming systems are helping smallholder producers to boost cereal yields, improve their incomes and livelihoods, conserve natural resources, reduce negative impacts on the environment, and build resilience to climate change. The book will be a valuable reference for policymakers and development practitioners guiding the transition to sustainable food and agriculture.
This framework presents ten interrelated principles/elements to guide Sustainable Agricultural Mechanization in Africa (SAMA). Further, it presents the technical issues to be considered under SAMA and the options to be analysed at the country and sub regional levels. The ten key elements required in a framework for SAMA are as follows: The analysis in the framework calls for a specific approach, involving learning from other parts of the world where significant transformation of the agricultural mechanization sector has already occurred within a three-to-four decade time frame, and developing policies and programmes to realize Africa’s aspirations of Zero Hunger by 2025. This approach entails the identification and prioritization of relevant and interrelated elements to help countries develop strategies and practical development plans that create synergies in line with their agricultural transformation plans. Given the unique characteristics of each country and the diverse needs of Africa due to the ecological heterogeneity and the wide range of farm sizes, the framework avoids being prescriptive.
Sustainable crop production intensification can be summed up in the words save and grow. Sustainable intensification means a productive agriculture that conserves and enhances natural resources. It uses an ecosystem approach that draws on nature's contribution to crop growth and applies appropriate external inputs at the right time, in the right amount. FAO's aim over the next 15 years is to assist developing countries in adopting save and grow policies and approaches. This book presents a new paradigm: sustainable crop production intensification (SCPI), which produces more from the same area of land while conserving resources, reducing negative impacts on the environment and enhancing natural capital and the flow of ecosystem services. Also published in Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Russian.
Cover crops slow erosion, improve soil, smother weeds, enhance nutrient and moisture availability, help control many pests and bring a host of other benefits to your farm. At the same time, they can reduce costs, increase profits and even create new sources of income. You¿ll reap dividends on your cover crop investments for years, since their benefits accumulate over the long term. This book will help you find which ones are right for you. Captures farmer and other research results from the past ten years. The authors verified the info. from the 2nd ed., added new results and updated farmer profiles and research data, and added 2 chap. Includes maps and charts, detailed narratives about individual cover crop species, and chap. about aspects of cover cropping.
The manual work carried out by farmers and their families is often both arduous and time consuming and in many countries this is a major constraint to increasing agricultural production. Such day-to-day drudgery is a major contributoring factor in the migration of people, particularly the young, from the rural countryside to seek the prospect of a better life in the towns and cities. Farm production can be substantially increased through the use of mechanical technologies which both are labor-saving and directly increase yields and production. This document provides guidelines on the development and formulation of an agricultural mechanization strategy and forms part of FAO's approach on sustainable production intensification.