Critical issues for the enhancement of intercropping for sustainable European agriculture

Watson Christine, Topp Kairsty, Karley Alison, Justes Eric. 2022. Critical issues for the enhancement of intercropping for sustainable European agriculture. In : Book of abstracts: XVII Congress of the European Society for Agronomy. ESA. Müncheberg : ZALF, Résumé, p. 382. Congress of the European Society for Agronomy. 17, Potsdam, Allemagne, 29 Août 2022/2 Septembre 2022.

Résumé : Intercropping is an agroecological practice for crop diversification which involves growing mixtures of arable crop species in both space and time. It has long been recognized as a way to improve the sustainability of crop production. Although intercropping has been a traditional practice for centuries in many parts of the world, intercropping is not widely used in European agriculture. While intercropping may increase the complexity of operations on farm it can bring benefits of reduced requirements for fertilisers and crop protection chemicals and increased yields in low input and organic farming. On the other hand, sowing, harvesting and separation of grains is perceived as a bottleneck by producers and stakeholders. When it comes to utilising the products of intercrops for feed and food there are many factors to consider around quality, use and price. In terms of policy contributions, cereal/grain legume intercrops, for example, can easily contribute to home grow protein production but also to the EU Climate Action and Biodiversity Targets and the Farm to Fork Strategy at the heart of the European Green Deal. Here we bring together the findings of two EU H2020 projects (ReMIX and DIVERSify) to examine the scientific, technical, and socioeconomic and policy issues around the increased use of intercrops in Europe and we identified 12 “hot topics” scanning the horizon for needs and opportunities to boost intercropping for feed and food in Europe.

Auteurs et affiliations

• Watson Christine, SRUC (GBR)
• Topp Kairsty, SRUC (GBR)
• Karley Alison, The James Hutton Institute (GBR)
• Justes Eric, CIRAD-DG-Direction générale (FRA) ORCID: 0000-0001-7390-7058

Source : Cirad-Agritrop (https://agritrop.cirad.fr/609917/)

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