Let’s drop the beet! Beets can be grown year-round and are a perfect, flavorful addition to meals. Start growing your own no-till beets with these helpful tips! The following is an excerpt from The Living Soil Handbook by Jesse Frost. It has a been adapted for the web. How to Grow No-Till Beets Both a cold- and heat-hardy crop, beets are one my favorite year-round vegetables to grow. Beets also make an excellent intercrop. And when piled on the table, they really draw customers in, and we can sell nearly every bunch of beets we bring. Getting Started: Estimated Seed Quantities We transplant most of our beets; we purchase 1,200 seeds per 100-foot (30 m) bed or 300 seeds per single row. We do not direct seed beets often because (like Swiss chard) beet seeds are multigerm seeds that produce multiple plants from one seed, which results in plantings that are too dense. For times when we do plan to direct seed, we purchase approximately 1,600 seeds per bed. Bed Prep for No-Till Beets Beds are fertilized and a small amount of compost mulch is added if needed. We soak the trays of beet seedlings in compost tea or extract...

Crop intercropping is important for improved land use efficiency by promoting complementary use of light, water, nutrients, and growing space between the com...

The fertile basaltic soils of Vietnam's Central Highlands have helped make the country the world's largest producer of Robusta coffee. But decades of intensive coffee monoculture have left many soils increasingly degraded, threatening productivity across the region. In response, many farmers diversified into crops such as black pepper, durian and avocado. Nearly half of the coffee farms in the region now include at least one intercrop, yet little was known about how these increasingly complex farming systems affect soil health. An ACIAR-supported research activity has helped fill that knowledge gap, showing that not all intercropping systems carry the same soil health risks, and evidence was needed to guide more informed crop management decisions. The team of researchers from Deakin University, The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and Vietnam's Pepper Research and Development Centre under the Western Highlands Agriculture and Forestry Sciences Institute (WASI) surveyed 375 farms across the Central Highlands to investigate how different intercropping systems influence soil health. Three key findings The study uncovered three key findings. First, soil degradation and soil-borne pathogens are widespread across the region. Soil and root analyses confirmed that harmful fungi and plant-parasitic nematodes are common regardless of location and crop type, highlighting...

Abstract. Crop yields in intercropping systems are the result of a combination of factors dominated by plastic responses in plant traits due to the heterog

Species mixtures are one of the levers for sustainable agriculture, as they can allow the reduction of environmental impacts while maintaining yields. Farmers face challenges in implementing them, however — notably technical difficulties and constraints related to cultivation and post-harvest sorting equipment. This study explores farmers’ agricultural equipment fleet management logics in the context of arable species mixture cultivation, a blind spot in the scientific literature. Our research methodology draws on the innovation tracking approach. Data were collected through interviews with 13 farmers cultivating species mixtures across France. We examined: (i) the characteristics and management of mixtures, as farmers consider them when selecting and using equipment, (ii) the technical features of the equipment used — including modifications and farmer-driven design, and (iii) farmers’ overall logic for managing their equipment fleets. The results reveal six categories of species mixtures, distinguished by their spatial arrangement and sowing depth, both closely linked to equipment use. Farmers use a wide diversity of equipment, often modified or repurposed to suit specific mixtures, such as seed drills adapted to sow different species at distinct depths. Three main management logics were identified among the interviewees: (i) minimizing costs through existing equipment reuse, (ii) adapting equipment to the biological characteristics of species mixtures, and (iii) making equipment choices based on local resources. Here we demonstrate how the management of agricultural equipment is a central lever for species mixture cultivation. This study offers new insights into equipment for agroecological farming practices, providing reflexive guidance for researchers, advisers, and equipment manufacturers involved in the transition toward more sustainable agriculture.

Functional intercropping aims to beneficially associate two or more plant species or varieties, simultaneously increasing plant diversity and the provisionin...

"Explore the transformation of petrochemicals into fertilizers. Discover the essential components and processes involved in this crucial industry."

To address major environmental challenges, meat-focused agri-food systems should shift to more sustainable plant-based alternatives, mainly centered around food legumes. However, not enough is known about the impact of pulse cultivation on nonmarket services, such as biodiversity conservation. Especially knowledge of the exact effect of management on endangered arable flora is limited. Understanding nonmarket services is essential for communicating the benefits of pulses to consumers, for adapting management practices, and for calculating potential remuneration. This study investigates how management practices, environmental (soil and weather), and landscape contextual factors influence biodiversity and provisioning services in pulse fields, and how these two services interact. Vegetation data from lentil and chickpea experimental plots and organic fields in the Mediterranean region were mapped and analyzed using primary data meta-analysis and ordination methods. We found that management practices are critical for biodiversity conservation in pulse systems. Omitting weed control increases arable flora species richness but not necessarily the Shannon index and monocropping outperforms intercropping in terms of arable flora diversity. Biodiversity in organic fields was significantly higher in field edges than in centers, highlighting the need for zone-specific management. Furthermore, landscape diversity and field size emerged as important drivers of biodiversity, particularly in the edges, where they explained over 20% of the variance. No negative relationship was found between arable flora diversity and grain yield, and biodiversity positively correlated with crop cover, showing that pulse cultivation can support both biodiversity conservation and production in organic systems.