Gosh, maybe farmers knew something about smart farming before food conglomerates, factory farming, high technology, and big data. From Steve Gillman at realclearwire.com:
From ancient Egypt to medieval England, cultivating one or more crops in the same field was common practice among many farmers for thousands of years. However, in the last century, food producers largely stopped ‘intercropping’ and moved towards an industrial type of agriculture – a shift that contributed to 34% of the world’s farmland being degraded today.
“Interest is growing in intercropping [again] because farmers increasingly understand it improves their soil health,” said Jerry Allford, an organic farmer and advisor from the Soil Association, a UK charity promoting sustainable agriculture. Jerry thinks this renewed focus can “open up a whole new way of farming” because it can bridge profitability with regenerative agriculture practices.
“In the case of growing a legume and cereal together, we know there is nutrient transfer between the two crops,” he said, adding that this reduces the need for synthetic fertilisers and its associated costs. Other potential benefits include reduced weeds, pests and diseases as well as higher resistance to extreme weather from climate change – all of which can improve farmers’ bottom line.
To understand and amplify the potential of intercropping, Jerry is running a range of trials where farmers grow a mix of crops on the same stretch of land. This is part of an EU project called LEGUMINOSE which is researching the benefits of intercropping in eight European countries, as well as in Egypt and Pakistan. In total, there will be 180 ‘living labs’ where farmers in monoculture systems introduce a strip of intercropped cereals and legumes, such as wheat and peas or barley and broad beans.
