Integrated farming with intercropping increases food production while reducing environmental footprint

Significance The world has been struggling to find sustainable ways to increase crop production to satisfy the needs for food, feed, fiber, and industrial uses while reducing negative environmental impacts. This challenge is magnified in countries/regions where the availability of farmable land for agriculture is limited. We developed an integrated cropping system that incorporates key farming tactics. Tested in 16 field experiments over 12 consecutive years (2006 to 2017), the integrated system increased crop yields while decreasing the environmental footprint. The integration enables significant synergies in biophysical processes to occur under a wide range of crop inputs, suggesting that system integration can be adopted globally for a range of smallholder farming.