Alley Cropping Increases Land Use Efficiency and Economic Profitability Across the Combination Cultivation Period

Abstract

Alley cropping allows the famer to effectively use available resources and yield more benefits. Choosing suitable associated crop and mitigating the competition between trees and crops are crucial for designing the alley cropping systems. We conducted a long-term experiment, including apple (Malus pumila)/peanut (Arachis hypogaea), apple/millet (Setaria italica) and apple/maize (Zea mays) alley cropping systems with conventional intercropping distance, and corresponding monocultures (Exp.1), and a short-term experiment with improved intercropping distance in the same three combinations (Exp.2) in the Loess Plateau, China. The results showed crop yields in three alley cropping systems were lower than the corresponding monocultures. Apple yields were significantly constrained by millet and maize in the alley cropping systems, but not sensitive to the presence of peanut. Land equivalent ratios (LERs) ranged from 0.44 to 0.89 before the tree bore fruit. The LERs were greater than 1.0 after the tree bore fruit, and the apple trees made a decisive contribution to the land use advantage. Net present values of three alley cropping systems were on average 60.1% higher than the corresponding monocultures across the alley cropping period. The maximum annual present value in the first–fifth, sixth and seventh–ninth years after the alley cropping establishment was observed in the apple/maize, apple/millet and apple/peanut system, respectively. These results highlight that choosing the optimal alley cropping management and suitable associated crops at different years after establishment may allow farmers to increase the land use efficiency and economic profitability.

Land Use Planning for Disaster-Prone Areas in Southern Region of Mount Merapi

“…Agroforestrybased land use was considered a holistic food production system that provided various benefits to the environment, society, and economy of the local community (Elevitch, Mazaroli, & Ragone, 2018). Additionally, the use of alley cropping systems could also develop an economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable farming system (Xu, Bi, Gao, & Yun, 2019).…”

Semi-natural regeneration and conservation in agroforestry system models on small-scale farmers

“…The biggest challenge related to climate change, food security, and decreasing agricultural resources is developing an excellent agricultural system that can increase farmers' income (Xu et al 2019). Agroforestry provides a solution to various problems, i.e., enable farmers to use available land resources at lower environmental costs effectively, and produce various products (i.e.…”

Relevance of Intermittent Rivers and Streams in Agricultural Landscape and Their Impact on Provided Ecosystem Services—A Mediterranean Case Study

“…This is a strong shortcoming as these studies typically fail to consider the ecology of the landscape as they omit the inherent inter-connectivity between landscape elements. For instance, even the most utilized land use/land cover classifications can overlook small, but important, pieces within the landscape such as urban gardens, forest patches, hedgerows, and riparian vegetation of permanent or temporal river/streams, as well as the unused land around pivot irrigation soil or alley cropping [4,5,6].…”