Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Crop Productivity and Economic Return for the Smallholders of Bangladesh: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Agricultural farming is a complicated system that involves continuous interactions among its multiple components over a period of time. The series of activities involved in farming practices have enormous contributions to ensure food security for the humanity. With the passage of time, agriculture sector faces diversified challenges like high food demand of rapidly growing population, scarcity of available resources and adverse effect of climate change. In developing countries like Bangladesh, food sufficiency is mostly achieved through intensive farming which has detrimental effects on natural resources, surrounding environment, and the whole ecosystem. The review attempts to discover the potentials of conservation agriculture practices for sustainable crop productivity and economic profitability of smallholder farmers in Bangladesh. This study revealed that conservation farm management practice is a cost-effective modernized technique that has the ability to accelerate crop productivity and farmers income through minimum utilization of agricultural inputs. Although the concept of conservation agriculture is widely practiced in other parts of the world, Bangladesh is experiencing a slow rate of adoption during the last few years. The policy implication of the study suggests that the government should take coordinated and combined initiatives involving both public and private sector organizations to incorporate this concept into the mainstream agricultural system of Bangladesh.