strategy
Intercropping
Synonyms:
Intercropping crops among treesUsing alley farming
Description:
Intercropping is the planting of crops in alternative rows in order to increase diversity, to enable the plants to help each other, to increase ground cover and typically to increase yields. Intercropping among trees can add to these benefits, as well as conserving trees. Intercropping enables the farmer to maximize connections between elements, increasing stability, diversity and total yield of a planting.
Implementation:
Alley farming is an ecologically stabilizing process designed for tropical farmers to increase and sustain crop production. Rows of nutrient-rich trees form 5 meter alleys. If farmers regularly use prunings from these trees as mulch for crops grown in the alleys, the trees function as 'fertilizer bushes'. Farmers can defer fallow on fragile soils, extend and diversify cropping, and increase yields. As an innovation bundle, alley cropping supplies useful by-products: animal fodder, crop staking material, firewood, and mulch for erosion control and moisture retention.
Claim:
On-farm research demonstrates that if the technical aspects of alley cropping outpace essential human components, the practice becomes dysfunctional, and the benefits farmers derive are negligible.
Broader:
Farming with treesGrowing multiple cropsUsing companion plantingEmploying diversity plantingUsing permaculture agriculture Narrower:
Using hedgerow intercropping Facilitates:
Preserving harvested foodsRehabilitating degraded landImproving agricultural productivityCoordinating agricultural productionIncreasing efficiency of manual farmingDeveloping sustainable agriculture in humid areasReducing shortfalls in agricultural crop productionAddressing problems of cultivation of marginal agricultural landProtecting against environmental hazards from agricultural and pastoral activities Facilitated by:
Developing alternatives to tropical slash-and-burnInvestigating interaction between agriculture and environmentEstablishing information exchange networks on alternative forms of agricultureConducting alley farming research Problems:
Crop failuresDeclining agricultural land
Degradation of agricultural land by cash crops
Environmental hazards from agricultural and pastoral activities
Inappropriate modernization of agriculture
Intensive farming
Misuse of tropical rain forests for agricultural development
Shortfalls in agricultural crop production
Unproductive subsistence agriculture
Unsustainable short-term improvements in agricultural productivity
Type Classification:
D: Detailed strategies Related UN Sustainable Development Goals:
