What are the benefits of growing multiple crop species together?

Abstract

In early 2023 Wopke van der Werf and his team had the happy news that their meta-analysis on the productive performance of intercropping had been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, better known by its abbreviation PNAS. Now, in 2024, an adaptation of this journal paper for middle and high school children was published in the American Science Journal for Kids. The editors of this journal have done a marvellous job making the potential of intercropping, accessible to kids. This will bring intercropping to the classroom at high schools. Did you know there are different ways to grow food? Two ways are sole cropping and intercropping. Farmers sole crop when they plant a field with only one crop. Farmers intercrop when they plant two or more crops in the same field. We wanted to compare sole cropping and intercropping. We found that intercropping produces less of each type of crop on a field. But intercropping produces more food choices. It also can save land space and reduce the amount of fertilizer needed to grow food. That is why intercropping is an important method for farmers to consider using in the future.