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Factsheet - EU CAP Network Focus Group ‘Crop associations including Milpa and protein crops'

Find out all information from the EU CAP Network Focus Group 'Crop associations including Milpa and protein crops' at a glance.

  • 2023-2027
Crops and plants

How to integrate crop associations into existing cropping systems and farm landscapes to increase farm resilience and efficient use of natural resources while reducing the dependency on external inputs?

The key findings from the Focus Group on ‘Crop associations including Milpa and protein crops’, to overcome the challenges of crop associations and encourage uptake included novel ways to:

  • Mechanise crop associations by making use of existing equipment, with machinery adaptations as and where needed, and also by tapping into the practical experiences of others engaged in crop mechanisations.
  • Adapt breeding and variety testing schemes to test mixing ability that allow suitable plant cultivars and varieties to be identified.
  • Add value to crop association produce, so as to increase economic viability.
  • Introduce crop association practices gradually using practices that provide ‘stepping stones’ in the transition from monocrops.
  • Seek out existing knowledge from a variety of information sources using systematic search strategies.

Success factors of implementing crop associations included their potential for reducing external inputs, diversifying the farm business, increasing income from subsidies, using land more efficiently, and spreading the workload on the farm throughout the year. Agronomic, economic and social barriers to uptake included the perceived additional complexity of managing diversified cropping systems, and potentially higher costs and labour, leading to some reluctance to invest effort when returns are uncertain.

Author(s)

EU CAP Network

Resources

English language

Factsheet - EU CAP Network Focus Group ‘Crop associations including Milpa and protein crops'

(PDF – 2.52 MB – 2 pages)