Abstract
It is currently estimated that 40 million hectares worldwide are cultivated through no-tillage systems (Derpsh, 1998). Small family farms account for less than 50,000 ha, half of them located in South America's Southern Cone (Wall, 1998). Many hypotheses have been offered to explain why so few small farmers have adapted to this method. The most simplistic ones relate this limited adoption to small farmers' traditionalism and to their rejection of innovation. Others point to the low technological development of animal-drawn equipment needed for this technology or the low educational level of family farmers.
Results of work done in the Center-South of Paraná, Southern Brazil, by AS-PTA1 in partnership with the region's Forum of Family Farmers Organizations, challenge these hypotheses and draw attention to the need for new approaches and processes of research and extension if the goal is to disseminate and implement appropriate no-tillage systems among family farmers. One requisite is to lower production costs of this method through elimination of herbicides and using green manure and cover crops that shift the crop-weed balance in favor of crops.
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Petersen, P., Tardin, J.M. & Marochi, F. Participatory Development of No-tillage Systems without Herbicides for Family Farming: The Experience of the Center-South Region of Paraná. Environment, Development and Sustainability 1, 235–252 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010091208938
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010091208938