Intercropping, or the simultaneous cultivation of multiple crops on a single plot of land, can significantly increase the yield, not only of low input agriculture, but also of intensive agriculture, and reduce the use of fertilisers.
Scientists of Wageningen University & Research (WUR) reached this conclusion in collaboration with colleagues from China. They published their results in Nature Plants.
Farmers have applied intercropping for as long as we can remember. The dominant idea was that this method provided benefits primarily in low-input agriculture and in areas where low-cost labour is available and fertilisers are expensive or unavailable, such as in parts of Africa, Asia and parts of Latin America. Through an extensive meta-analysis of 226 previously conducted experiments, WUR researchers and their colleagues of China Agricultural University, discovered that intercropping can contribute at least as much to a significantly higher yield of intensive agriculture, while lowering the use of fertiliser.
Intercropping appears to give a 16-29% larger yield per unit area than monocultures in intensive agriculture under the same circumstances, while using 19-36% less fertiliser when counted per unit product. The increase is most significant utilising a method of intercropping called “relay strip intercropping” that is frequently applied in China. This method combines crops whose growing season differs in strips that are one to 1.5 metres wide, with several rows of a crop species in each strip.
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