Dryland Farming: Concept, Origin and Brief History

Abstract

Rainfed agriculture is used to describe farming practices that rely solely on precipitation for water. Although dryland farming is a part of rainfed farming, it occurs primarily in semiarid areas where annual precipitation is generally less than 25–50 % of the potential evapotranspiration demands. Therefore, dryland farming emphasizes water conservation, sustainable crop yields, limited inputs, and wind and water conservation restraints. Because of increased environmental concerns and the threat of recent climatic abnormalities, the challenges are to increase resilience and maintain sustainability of dryland farming. There are no standard guidelines that can be applied to determine the sustainability of dryland farming regions because it largely depends on local climatic conditions as well as regulations and policies at local, regional, and national levels. However, the adoption of conservation agriculture that is based on continuous minimum mechanical soil disturbance, permanent organic soil-cover, and diversification of crop species grown in sequences and/or associations should be applied to the fullest extent feasible in all dryland farming systems.