Economics Of Conservation Agriculture Practices Imposed In Wheat-Maize-Rice Cropping System In Bangladesh

Conservation agriculture (CA) is considered as a suitable crop management technique to offer higher crop productivity and economic benefits to farmers while safeguarding environment. To investigate these issues, an experiment was conducted under irrigated conditions using four treatments such as conventional agriculture (T1), conservation agriculture (CA) (T2), bed planting (T3) and CA plus bed planting (T4), imposed on component crops within a wheatmaize-rice cropping system during November 2010 to December 2015 at BARI research station, Gazipur, Bangladesh. The CA practices were based on retaining rice and wheat straw of 25 cm height and reduced tillage of single pass of power tiller operated tiller (PTOS) (in case of T2) and single pass of power tiller operated bed planter (in case of T4). ANOVA for adjusted 4 years pooled mean revealed no significant treatment effects for yield and economic analysis parameters (P≥0.05) for rice except BCR (P≥0.05) but the effects were significant for wheat, maize and wheat-maize-rice system for all economic parameters. Wheat yield across tillage treatments over four years ranged from 3,870 kg/ha in conventional to 5,182 kg/ha in CA. But maize, rice and W-M-R system ranged, respectively, from 5,810 kg/ha under conventional, 4,568 kg/ha under Bed, and 14,906 kg/ha under conventional practice to 7,175 kg/ha under CA, 5,032 kg/ha and 16,354 kg/ha under bed planting plus CA. Compared to conventional tillage the average maize and system yield across three CA practices were greater by16% and 11.7%, respectively. Maize production cost ranged from Tk. 47,966/ha with the bed planting plus CA to Tk. 69,816/ha for conventional practices. Net returns and BCR of maize, however, ranged from Tk. 50,668/ha and 1.34 under FP to Tk. 101,932/ha under CA and 1.73 under bed planting plus CA, respectively. Likewise, total cost of production across treatments and years in rice ranged from Tk. 48,800/ha in three CA practices to Tk. 62,900/ha in conventional tillage while net return ranged from Tk. 18571/ha 1 Principal Scientific Officer (PSO), Regional Wheat Research Centre, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Joydebpur, Gazipur-1701, Bangladesh E-mail: ataur67@yahoo.com 2 Senior Scientific Officer, Agricultural Economics Division, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Joydebpur, Gazipur-1701, Bangladesh, E-mail: esmatbau@yahoo.com 3 System Agronomist, CIMMYT-Bangladesh, Gulsan-2, House 10/B, Road 53, Dhaka 1212 E-mail: t.tiwary@cgir.org 4 Professor, Department of Agribusiness and Marketing, Bangladesh Agricultural University Mymensingh-2202, Bangladesh, E-mail: ismailho12@yahoo.co.in, Cell: + 8801711185763 86 The Bangladesh Journal of Agricultural Economics under FP to Tk. 35,550/ha in bed planting plus CA. It is concluded that while CA based tillage options may not have significant yield advantage over conventional tillage in maize and rice, they have significant advantages in terms of reduced production cost and labour use, and increased net returns. Considering the present climate change scenario and labour shortage during peak cropping season, policy should be focused on popularizing conservation practices as these improve grain productivity and save cost which yielded higher BCR thus farmers can get higher income by shifting their land from conventional agriculture to conservation