Intercropping: the pros and cons

A major challenge for farmers today is to increase output per hectare in a sustainable manner. One way of doing this is through intercropping.

Intercropping is the practice of growing two or more crops on the same land. The aim is to achieve the highest yield off that land by maximising the potential of the resources present at a given time.

Some farmers also use intercropping to improve the amount of organic material in the rows to reduce soil temperature and retain soil moisture through live mulching.

Intercropping in a commercial enterprise also provides livestock feed, particularly during the dry season.

competing for light and water

There are different forms of intercropping ( see panel below). In all cases, however, when two or more crops are planted together they compete for light, water and nutrients. This means they could have a negative effect on each other.

Successful intercropping depends on maintaining a good balance between competition and cooperation.

Good examples of the latter are where a legume improves soil quality by fixing nitrogen, and where a second crop acts as a cover crop, shading the soil and helping improve water retention. Disadvantages of intercropping: • It is not always suited to a mechanised farming system;

• It requires more attention and therefore more expert management. Careful cultivar selection, proper spacing and other factors are also important; • If you plant, weed and harvest less efficiently, you are likely to have higher labour costs.

intercropping needs careful planning well in advance

But the greatest challenge to adopting intercropping is the advance planning required to plant, cultivate, fertilise, spray and harvest more than one crop on the same land.

The first step is to select crops that are compatible. In other words, these plants should be able to grow well side by side. They must either mature at the same time or one crop must ‘wait’ while the other matures. More about this next week.

• Source: Mathews, J. 2018. ‘The pros & cons of intercropping’. Grain SA. Retrieved from www.grainsa.co.za/the-pros-cons-of-intercropping.