Why is China's Blue Revolution so “Blue”? Conservation tillage adoption in China

Excerpt

In response to problems associated with traditional tillage, over the past two decades, Conservation Agriculture (CA) has gradually emerged. Its adoption is becoming so widespread and benefits so great that it is being called the technology behind a new Blue Revolution. Somewhat surprisingly, given China's relatively strong track record in producing and spreading new cropping technologies, there is little information in the literature on the adoption of CA in China. The overall goal of this paper is to increase our understanding of the adoption of CA technology, or more precisely, the reduced tillage/residue retention part of the CA technology package—Conservation Tillage (CT). We will also discuss the constraints to adoption that exist in northern China.

Despite the widespread adoption of CT technology in other countries (such as in the United States, Canada, and Brazil), adoption of CT technology in China is relatively low. Our paper shows that this is particularly true for adoption of Full CT technology. Few farmers in China have chosen to adopt a package of technology that includes both no tillage/reduced tillage and residue retension together. In other words, in the mid-2000s, the adoption rate of Full CT technology package was only around 1%. Although our data…