Land Preparation Methods and Soil Quality : The case of Vertisols in the Highlands of Ethiopia

The industrialization of agriculture led to societal concerns for environmental protection and food quality in developed countries, while the need for increased agricultural productivity to address the persistent poverty and food insecurity in developing countries is intensified. Improving the management of land and water resources across the scale to meet the objectives of increased productivity and sustained environmental quality are increasingly required. This book is prepared based on a PhD dissertation of the Author that attempted to address these issues focusing on the Vertisols in the Highlands of Ethiopia. Based on the six years field experiment and extensive participatory exploration with the smallholder farmers in a small watershed, it deals with the effects of land preparation methods on soil quality and productivity of the soil. It provides the state of the art literature review, including on methodologies of the participatory and standard methods of soil quality assessment. The evaluation of economical and ecological sustainability of alternative land preparation methods makes the core chapters.