Quantifying the adoption of conservation agriculture: Development and application of the Conservation Agriculture Appraisal Index

CONTEXT: Estimates of conservation agriculture (CA) adoption vary worldwide because of a lack of a standardized methodology to quantify the simultaneous utilization of its core principles of minimum soil disturbance, permanent soil organic cover and crop diversification. Comparisons of CA adoption among farms across regions requires estimation of the farm area and cropping season where CA principles are applied. OBJECTIVE: To develop the Conservation Agriculture Appraisal Index (CAAI) as a standardized conceptual framework with defined thresholds that indicates the intensity and frequency of use of each CA core principle. CAAI was subsequently applied to quantify CA adoption on farms across four wheat (triticum aestivum) growing regions, both with and without livestock, including dryland and irrigated systems in Australia and Mexico, respectively. METHODS: CAAI is a continuous scoring system that estimates the intensity and frequency of application of the core principles and their concurrent utilization to assess the extent of CA adoption. CAAI score is the sum of the scores of each core principle, accounting for the percentage of the farm area and cropping season where CA is applied. CAAI emerged from semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and farm visits that captured underlying patterns of CA use in regional-specific contexts. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: CAAI assessed annual CA adoption on 100 farms in four wheat growing regions with different environments and farming systems. The adoption of CA was higher in Australia than Mexico, where partial adoption was more prevalent, especially for summer crops. 'No adoption' of CA occurred when one of the core principles consistently scored zero within a year. SIGNIFICANCE: The CAAI can be used as a benchmarking research tool at the farm level to standardize units for comparisons and identify levels of CA adoption by farm area and cropping seasons between and across regions.