Description of Challenge
Monoculture can lead to a number of issues down the road: Planting the same crop in the same place each year zaps nutrients from the earth and leaves soil weak and unable to support healthy plant growth. Because soil structure and quality is so poor, farmers are forced to use chemical fertilizers to encourage plant growth and fruit production. These fertilizers, in turn, disrupt the natural makeup of the soil and contribute further to nutrient depletion.Recent research on indigenous methods suggests that world hunger and soil destruction result at least partly from the abandonment of traditional agriculture and intercropping.” Donald Q. Innis
Solution
Intercropping offers farmers the opportunity to engage nature’s principle of diversity on their farms and have the following advantages: Benefits of intercropping are crop yield, productivity of various plant constituents, economic return, yield stability, social benefits, pest control, and nutrient use efficiency. Furthermore, because of some favorable exudates from the component legumes, greater land-use efficiency, greater yield stability and increased competitive ability towards weed, intercropping is advantageous over mono-cropping.
