The adoption of CA can help improve the quality of soils, water systems, and air. Reduced soil erosion due to less exposure to both water runoff and wind, is a major benefit of the low soil disturbance and soil cover principles of CA. As less land is plowed and more soil is covered with residues, the severity of dust storms will decline. Improvements in soil fertility, especially soil structure and cycling of nutrients through the use of legumes, can reduce the need for fertilizer applications, and reductions in weeds, diseases and pests may decrease the reliance on pesticides. There has been much speculation about the ability of CA to increase soil organic matter, sequester carbon and possibly mitigate the effects of carbon dioxide emissions and greenhouse gas effects. ZT can reduce the use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions associated with agricultural production in some cases. After six years of CA experiments in Syria, the carbon sequestration rate measured was in the range of 0.27 to 0.30 Mg C/ha/year, and this rather modest increase was probably due to low to moderate crop productivity and a reasonable starting soil organic matter content of about 1.3 percent.
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