No-tillage system participatory quality index

Tiago S Telles,Graziela M C Barbosa,Marco A P Lourenço,Ana J Righetto

doi:10.1590/1807-1929/agriambi.v24n2p128-133

Tiago S Telles, Graziela M C Barbosa + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1590/1807-1929/agriambi.v24n2p128-133

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Abstract

ABSTRACT The no-tillage system participatory quality index aims to evaluate the quality and efficiency of soil management under no-tillage systems and consists of a weighted sum of eight indicators: intensity of crop rotation, diversity of crop rotation, persistence of crop residues in the soil surface, frequency of soil tillage, use of agricultural terraces, evaluation of soil conservation, balance of soil fertilization and time of adoption of the no-tillage system. The aim of this study was to assess the extent to which these indicators correlate with the no-tillage system participatory quality index and to characterize the farmers who participated in the research. The data used were provided by ITAIPU Binacional for the indicators of the no-tillage system participatory quality index II. Descriptive analyses were performed, and the Pearson correlation coefficient between the index and each indicator was calculated. To assess the relationship between the indicators and the farmers’ behavior toward the indicators, principal component analysis and cluster analysis were performed. Although all correlations are significant at p-value ≤ 0.05, some correlations are weak, indicating a need for improvement of the index. The principal component analysis identified three principal components, which explained 66% of the variability of the data, and the cluster analysis separated the 121 farmers into five groups. It was verified that the no-tillage system participatory quality index II has some limitations and should therefore be reevaluated to increase its efficiency as an indicator of the quality of the no-tillage system.

Highlights

The no-tillage system (NTS), known as conservation agriculture (CA) (Kassam et al, 2009), represents a set of agricultural practices supported on three pillars: permanent soil cover, minimum soil tillage and crop rotation (Friedrich et al, 2012; Derpsch et al, 2014; Ward et al, 2018)
The strongest correlation identified was between IQP2 and FP (0.76), and the weakest correlation was for IQP2 with the intensity of crop rotation (IR) indicator (0.15)
The intensity of crop rotation (IR) and the evaluation of soil conservation (CA) indicators should be reviewed since they are weakly correlated with the no-tillage system participatory quality index (IQP2)

Summary

Introduction

The no-tillage system (NTS), known as conservation agriculture (CA) (Kassam et al, 2009), represents a set of agricultural practices supported on three pillars: permanent soil cover, minimum soil tillage and crop rotation (Friedrich et al, 2012; Derpsch et al, 2014; Ward et al, 2018). Despite the benefits of NTS on the effective control of soil erosion, other soil conservation practices are necessary, such as contour farming and the use of agricultural terraces (Didoné et al, 2014; Londero et al, 2018; Telles et al, 2019). Because farmers believed that erosion processes would be fully controlled in no-tillage areas, many of them eliminated all or part of the agricultural terraces and abandoned contour farming (Silva & Maria, 2011), which resulted in low-quality NTS (Denardin et al, 2008; Didoné et al, 2017). The term NTS with quality emerged (Casão Junior et al, 2006)

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