Increasing farm resilience through crop associations

Ivar van Dorst is one of the experts of the EU CAP Network Focus Group 'Crop associations including Milpa and protein crops'. He manages Ekoto, an organic farm in the south of the Netherlands with an innovative, viable and sustainable business model based on agroecology, making efficient use of natural resources while reducing the dependency on external inputs. “I had in mind from the start that I needed to make a living out of the farm, otherwise it would not be sustainable. I also needed to find ways to ensure the farm could cope with external variables such as the changing climate” says Ivar.

In his first year in 2020, Ivar decided to start with a technical approach, focusing on which crops grow best next to each other. Each year since, he has added other elements, exploring what works financially and how to maintain employment on the farm. As part of his business model, Ivar innovates with sales based on customer demand. He supplies local businesses with products such as veg box schemes, zero-waste shops, cafés and bakeries with a variety of produce, offers a ‘pick-your-own’ service, and also has a farm shop.

On its 7 hectares of land, the farm grows arable crops, and over 30 different types of vegetables and herbs in strip cropping. The strip-cropping makes up a rotation of five crops: a cereal crop (mainly oats), a fruit crop (pumpkin), a legume crop to fix nitrogen, several vegetables, and an ‘experimental crop’ as the fifth. Ivar and his team apply strip cropping on most of the fields. They test combinations of crops to determine which can be most effective. Find out more in the article.

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