IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ragrxx/v62y2023i2p133-151.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic and environmental comparison of conventional and conservation agriculture in South African wheat production

Author

Listed:
  • Willy Mulimbi
  • Lawton Lanier Nalley
  • Johann Strauss
  • Kristiina Ala-Kokko

Abstract

Global wheat yields must increase to meet current and rising global demand despite the increasing threats to production resulting from climate change. One climate change adaptation strategy in wheat production in the Western Cape of South Africa is conservation agriculture (CA). Using a data set of 1,043 plot-level wheat observations collected at Langgewens and Tygerhoek research farms from 2002 to 2020, this study conducts a stepwise Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to estimate the environmental and economic impacts of switching from conventional wheat production to CA’s zero tillage (zero-till) and no-tillage (no-till) systems. The results indicate that CA is more profitable and has a higher environmental efficiency, than conventional tillage wheat production. In Langgewens, zero-till and no-till are respectively 113% and 55% more efficient than conventional tillage when comparing the environmental impact of producing one kg of wheat. Findings also suggest that, compared to 100% conventional tillage wheat production, the adoption of CA systems has led to reductions in environmental damage valued between R269.2 and R402.5 million in the Western Cape.

Suggested Citation

  • Willy Mulimbi & Lawton Lanier Nalley & Johann Strauss & Kristiina Ala-Kokko, 2023. "Economic and environmental comparison of conventional and conservation agriculture in South African wheat production," Agrekon, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 62(2), pages 133-151, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ragrxx:v:62:y:2023:i:2:p:133-151
    DOI: 10.1080/03031853.2023.2169481
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03031853.2023.2169481
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03031853.2023.2169481?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kamran Kheiralipour & Miguel Brandão & Malgorzata Holka & Adam Choryński, 2024. "A Review of Environmental Impacts of Wheat Production in Different Agrotechnical Systems," Resources, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-14, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ragrxx:v:62:y:2023:i:2:p:133-151. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ragr20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.