Weed management in Conservation Agriculture systems: farmers’ testimonies
摘要
Since the dawn of agriculture several millennia ago, farmers have tried to manage unwanted, spontaneous vegetation to give their crops an advantage over such vegetation and produce more of the desired yield in the crops they grow. After the shift by humans from a hunter-gatherer existence to producing their own food through agriculture, a variety of methods to manage weeds have been developed based on the knowledge and technologies available at a given time. Apart from hand weeding to reduce the pressure of weeds on crops, the use of soil tillage has been the preferred method over centuries to suppress weeds, whether selectively or non-selectively, through uprooting, burial or creating unfavourable conditions for unwanted vegetation.