Cropping Systems

Cropping Systems Definitions

Farming Systems
Farming systems represent an appropriate combination of farm enterprises, cropping systems, livestock, fisheries, forestry, poultry and the resources available to the farmer to raise them for food and/or profitability. Sustainable systems interact with the environment without dislocating the ecological and socio-economic balance while attempting to make a profit or provide food for the farmer and the farmers family.

Cropping Systems
Pattern of crops taken up for a given piece of land, or sequence in which the crops are cultivated on piece of land over a fixed period and their interaction with farm resources and other farm enterprises.

Multiple Cropping
Growing two or more crops consecutively or at the same time on the same field in the same year.

Mixed Cropping
Growing of two or more crops simultaneously on the same piece of land, without any definite row arrangement.

Multi-story/Multi-tier Cropping
It is a system of growing together, crops of different heights at the same time on the same piece of land and thus using land, water, and space most efficiently and economically i.e coconut + pepper + pineapple + grass.

Strip Cropping
Growing soil conserving and soil depleting crops in alternate strips running perpendicular to the slope of the land or to the direction of prevailing winds for the purpose of reducing erosion.

Intercropping
It refers to growing of two or more generally dissimilar crops simultaneously on the same piece of land. Usually the base crop is grown in a distinct row arrangement. The recommended optimum plant population of the base crop is suitably combined with appropriate additional plant density of the associated crop, and there is crop intensification in both time and space dimensions.

Agro-ecology
The study of the relation of agricultural crops and environment

Eco-farming
It is the potential for introducing mutually reinforcing ecological approaches to food production. It aims at the maintenance of soil chemically, biologically and physically the way nature would do it left alone. "Feed the soil, not the plant" is the watch word and slogan of ecological farming.

Alley Cropping
A farming system in which arable crops are grown in alleys formed by trees or shrubs, established mainly to hasten soil fertility restoration and enhance soil productivity, and for shelter.

Agro-forestry
It is a self-sustaining land management system which combines production of agricultural crops with tree crops and also with livestock simultaneously or sequentially, on the same unit of land.

Agro-silvi-pastoral
Systems in which land is managed for the concurrent production of agricultural and forest crops and for the rearing of domesticated animals. This system is, in effect a combination of agri-silviculture and the silvi-pastoral system.

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