Agricultural Sciences in China 2011, 10(6): 850-859 June 2011 © 2011, CAAS. All rights reserved. Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/S1671-2927(11)60071-0 Benefits of Conservation Agriculture on Soil and Water Conservation and Its Progress in China LI Ling-ling 1 , HUANG Gao-bao 1 , ZHANG Ren-zhi 2 , Bill Bellotti 3 , Guangdi Li 4 and Kwong Yin Chan 5 1 Gansu Provincial Key Laboratory of Aridland Crop Science/Faculty of Agronomy, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, P.R.China 2 Faculty of Resource and Environment, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, P.R.China 3 School of Natural Sciences, University of Western Sydney, NSW 1797, Australia 4 EH Graham Centre for Agricultural Innovation (Alliance Between Investment & Industry NSW and Charles Sturt University), Wagga Wagga Agricultural Institute, NSW 2650, Australia 5 Investment & Industry NSW, NSW 2753, Australia Abstract Conservation agriculture has been practised for three decades and has been spread widely. There are many nomenclatures surrounding conservation agriculture and differ to each other lightly. Conservation agriculture (CA) is a system approach to soil and water conservation, high crop productivity and profitability, in one word, it is a system approach to sustainable agriculture. Yet, because conservation agriculture is a knowledge-intensive and a complex system to learn and implement, and also because of traditions of intensive cultivation, adoption rates have been low, since to date, only about seven percent of the world’s arable and permanent cropland area is farmed under conservation agriculture. The practice and wider extention of conservation agriculture thus requires a deeper understanding of its ecological underpinnings in order to manage its various elements for sustainable intensification, where the aim is to conserve soil and water and improve sustainability over the long term. This paper described terms related to conservation agriculture, presented the effects of conservation agriculture on soil and water conservation, crop productivity, progress and adoption of CA worldwide, emphasized obstacles and possible ways to increase CA adoption to accelerate sustainable development of China agriculture. Key words: China, conservation tillage, crop residue mulch, no-till, soil and water conservation, sustainability INTRODUCTION Since the 1980s, there has been an increased aware- ness of the need to improve ecosystem health, maintain the quality of the environment, and control the rate of resource consumption, thus the concept of sustainable development has been a driving force in research and development (Mermut and Eswaran 2001). The chal- lenge of agricultural sustainability has become more intense in recent years with the sharp rise in the cost of food and energy, climate change, water scarcity, deg- radation of ecosystem services and biodiversity, the financial crisis, and expected increase in population. Yet, as reported in many papers (e.g., Nolan et al. 2008), some agricultural systems are still being promoted with unacceptably high environmental, economic and social costs, and albeit with the promise of gains in output. Agricultural development, as currently practiced in many parts of the world is increasingly considered inadequate to deliver sustainable production intensification to meet future needs (Shaxson 2006). Received 7 July, 2010 Accepted 31 December, 2010 LI Ling-ling, Ph D, Tel: +86-931-7631156, Fax: +86-931-7630810, E-mail: lill@gsau.edu.cn; Correspondence HUNAG Gao-bao, Professor, Tel/Fax: +86-931-7632188, E-mail: huanggb@gsau.edu.cn