Yields and returns from strip intercropping on six Iowa farms

Abstract

Strip intercropping seeks to capture the biological efficiency of intercropping in traditional agricultural systems and is compatible with agricultural equipment used in the U.S. This efficiency stems from complementary use of resources by constituent crops and is a function of crop selection, strip width and orientation, weed control, and other factors. Strip intercropping requires a high level of management; further, some reports suggest the gains and losses more-or-less balance in actual production situations. These questions are best addressed by the performance of strip intercropping as implemented by farmers in production situations. Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) members have worked with Iowa State University agronomists to evaluate strip intercropping. For three years six farmers compared strip intercropping to field blocks of individual crops. The strip intercrop systems employed three crops: corn, soybeans, and small grains with a forage legume underseeding. The comparison systems, crops grown in sole-crop blocks, consisted of the same three crops on four farms (planting pattern comparison) or, on two farms, just corn and soybeans in rotation (systems comparison). Yields and field operations were recorded and entered in the Iowa State University Crop EnterpriseRecord System (CER) to derive gross profit, total production cost, and net profit for each crop component and for each cropping system on every farm. Strip intercropping net profit was generally greater than that infield blocks, and intercropping compared favorably with CER results obtained from corn-soybean rotations on other farms around Iowa. Land equivalent ratios (LER) were usually greater than 1.0, indicating satisfactory biological efficiency. Despite occasional problems, in this set of 18 site-years strip intercropping was associated with greater stability of net profit.

Temporal dynamics of nutrient uptake by neighbouring plant species: evidence from intercropping

“…Intercropping is widely practised across tropical and temperate regions world-wide (Vandermeer 1992;Li, Zhang & Zhang 2013). Compared with monoculture systems, intercropping can increase land utilization (Willey 1979;Hauggaard-Nielsen, Ambus & Jensen 2001), nutrient-, water-and light-use efficiency by plants (Zhang & Li 2003;Zhu et al 2015), and reduce both N inputs and losses to/from soils (Exner et al 1999;Cong et al 2015). Most studies on intercropping have focused on legume-cereal combinations because of the benefits that symbiotic N 2 fixation has on cereal biomass production (Vandermeer 1992;Li, Zhang & Zhang 2013;Ren et al 2014).…”

Root distribution and interactions between intercropped species

“…Intercropping has been long practiced in many parts of the world (Francis 1986), as it sometimes offers a higher land utilization efficiency (Willey 1979), efficient acquisition of nutrients (Stern 1993; Morris and Garrity 1993a), effective use of water resources (Morris and Garrity 1993b), and reduces accumulation of NO 3 -N in the soil profile (Stuelpnagel 1993) or N input (Exner et al 1999). It continues to be widely employed not only in tropical regions (Vandermeer 1989), but also in temperate regions.…”

Acquiring Plant Features with Optical Sensing Devices in an Organic Strip-Cropping System

“…Organic farming optimizes nutrients in the soil and benefits biodiversity, while reducing water pollution, among other things [3]. The SUREVEG project [4] focuses on the effects of different organic fertilizer strategies in strip-cropping systems to increase biodiversity [5], improve soil fertility, and reduce the use of natural resource [6,7]. The project's field trials are spread out all over Europe to account for the variation in the environmental effects of agricultural practices within and between the European Union (EU) [8].…”