Potential of conservation agriculture production systems (CAPS) for improving sustainable food and nutrition security in the hill region of Nepal.

Abstract

Abstract The results of on-farm trials verified that conservation agriculture production systems (CAPS) could be the suitable technology to cope with the challenges of improving food and nutrition security in the hill region of Nepal. Although CAPS did not increase the yields of individual crops, CAPS with an intercropping component increased overall food availability by allowing farmers to harvest two crops from the same land. From their first years, CAPS treatments with maize-legume and maize-millet/legume systems with conventional tillage increased economic access to food (by increasing the sales of cowpea and black gram), and improved diet quality (by increasing protein-rich food for consumption) compared to traditional systems. Although the most desirable CAPS (maize-millet/legume with strip tillage) did not have the advantage in terms of increasing food and nutritional security, it was still comparable to the traditional system, so farmers would not face yield reduction by adopting it. Unlike previous findings suggesting significant reduction of crop yields under reduced tillage practices, the reduction of yield from strip tillage was not significant in this study.