Research and application of mulch based direct sowing cropping systems in sustainable upland agriculture
2006
Ha Dinh Tuan | Le Quoc Doanh
Mountainous regions that occupy 3/4 of the Vietnamese territory are diverse and fragile ecological systems. They are becoming the homeland of more and more people due to the common trend of people's moving to the uplands where one can find new agricultural lands or can exploit natural resources for livelihoods. The arable lands, mainly sloping land resources are becoming depleted due to land degradation as a result of the still widely existing shifting cultivation. Protection and improvement of soil fertility on sloping lands has become an urgent issue in sustainable land use and durable sloping land agriculture. In this situation, the mulch based direct sowing cropping systems (DMC) have been proved effective in America, Australia, Africa, Europe and India. In Vietnam, the intensive research in application of DMC started with small scale farmers in the Northern mountainous regions since 1998. The research has been jointly implemented by the Vietnam Agricultural Science Institute (VAST) and CIRAD, followed by the Vietnamese institutions participating in the Science and Technology Program for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Northern mountainous Regions of Vietnam. The results are very promising: DMC can dramatically increase the crop yields due to reduced soil erosion, smothered weed growth, increased soil moisture and fertility, and the scaling up process is quite intensive. This paper presents the main results of research activities in DMC techniques, as well as their achievements in increasing the sloping land productivity and natural resources improvement in Vietnam.
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