Virtual Field Day: Intercropping in Arable Systems

Intercropping offers the potential for more efficient resource utilisation, reduced pest and disease pressure and better competition with weeds. This is a recording of an event co-ordinated by Agricology, Innovative Farmers and the ORC that was held as a virtual alternative to a field lab meeting - providing an opportunity for farmers and researchers to share their experiences, practical insights and questions in an informal discussion. Members of the Innovative Farmers Field Lab on Intercropping in Arable systems have been experimenting with a range of intercropping and companion cropped mixtures on their farms; including wheat-beans (weed suppression), OSR-peas and oats (pest resilience) and triticale-beans (scaffolding and weed suppression). David Casebow, at Sonning Farm (Crops Research Unit of Reading University), took us on a ‘virtual farm tour’ of the trials at Sonning (with the help of his father David who was out in the fields!) and shared insights from previous years. Other farmers and researchers also shared experiences from on-farm trials including farmer and Nuffield Scholar Andy Howard (Bockhanger Farms), Adrian Hares, organic beef and arable farmer of Roundhill Farm in Wiltshire, and researcher Lenora Ditzler - who talked about strip cropping in horticulture and pixel cropping in the Netherlands.