CroppingPractice Guide

Practice Guide: Intercropping

Practice Guide: Intercropping

PART OF A SERIES OF PRACTICE GUIDES TO USE AS PART OF YOUR REGENERATIVE CROPPING TOOLSET   |   LAST UPDATED: JUNE 2025

Overview

Intercropping involves growing two or more complementary crops together to increase plant diversity, with flow-on benefits for crop health, productivity, farm resilience, and soil and ecological health.

This intercropping practice guide explores crop intercropping strategies that promote soil health and biodiversity on farms. You’ll find practical examples and stories from three Australian croppers who have started experimenting with various types of intercropping.

Before trying a new practice, it is important to consider your unique context and goals. What are you trying to achieve? Soil and landscape ecosystems are complex, and no two farming systems are the same – what worked for one farmer may not work for you. So consider starting small, monitoring the results and allowing some room for trial and error. There is no silver bullet when it comes to addressing soil health, so think about which strategies or combinations of other practices may be suitable to support what you’re doing.
Important: This Guide is designed to provide general information only. It is not tailored to the context of any individual farm, person or business, and does not constitute advice. Before using the information, you should carefully evaluate its accuracy, currency, completeness and relevance for your purposes, and consider seeking advice from appropriate professionals who have taken into account your individual circumstances and objectives. As a nonprofit dedicated to supporting farmers, we work hard to ensure our information is useful and accurate. However, Soils for Life accepts no liability arising from any use or release of information in, or referred to in or linked to this guide, or any error, inaccuracy or omission.

What is intercropping?

Growing two or more cash crops in the same paddock at the same time is known as intercropping. It is a way to add diversity during the growing season and is often implemented alongside other practices that increase diversity between seasons, such as multispecies cover cropping (see our Multispecies Cropping Practice Guide). There are lots of different ways to intercrop and no clear lines between the different approaches. Common strategies include: 

  • Mixed intercropping: Two or more crops are sown, grown and harvested together, often with the seed mixed at sowing and planted in the same rows. 
  • Skip row or strip cropping: Different crops are grown in alternating rows, close enough to interact but still planted separately. 
  • Companion planting: Two or more crops are sown and grown together but only the primary crop is harvested. The other non-harvested crop supports the primary crop by helping with things like pest and disease control, soil nutrient cycling or weed control.
  • Relay cropping: Relay cropping is when a second crop is planted into an established crop before it is harvested. The two crops grow together for a while, sharing the paddock, but are harvested at different times.
Image 1. A canola and faba bean intercrop. Source: Brendan Pattison.

Farmers using intercropping

This guide includes examples from three Australian family-run farms to show how they’ve started to practice various types of intercropping on their farms in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.

Ian Congdon and Courtney Young run Woodstock Flour near Rutherglen, Victoria. Their farming philosophy is to showcase that regenerative farming can work for grain, not just grazing. They’re building regenerative grain production methods to supply their on-farm flour mill and sell flour directly to customers. 

Since moving to the property in 2021, they’ve focused on growing wheat and other cereals to supply their mill. Their farming system blends low-input cropping with long rest pasture phases of three years or more and uses diversity as a key tool to build soil fertility and resilience. While the farm is not certified organic, they manage with organic principles in mind, drawing on Ian’s experience on his family’s large certified-organic cropping operation in southern NSW and Courtney’s soil and landscape expertise as an emerging agroecologist. Note: Courtney works as Soils for Life’s Peer Learning Manager. 

As part of their broader diversity strategy, Ian and Courtney use companion planting, specifically, by undersowing clover beneath their grain crops. Undersown clover keeps soils covered, fixes nitrogen and helps control weeds after harvest. They’ve been experimenting with varieties, timing and management for a number of years and have found this type of intercropping works for them to build soil fertility and support their organic management. 

Their story highlights how companion planting can be a simple but important practice for soil management, especially when combined with a willingness to observe and adapt over time. 

‘The goal of our farm here is to showcase how you can actually grow organic grain in a thriving diverse agroecological system that brings the whole farm and the community forward.’ Ian Congdon

Location: Yorta Yorta Country, Rutherglen, VIC
Regional Climate: Warm summer, cold winter/temperate cool-season wet
Average Annual Rainfall: 650 mm
Property Size: 39 ha
Elevation: 200 m
Social Structure: Family farm
Enterprise Type: Grain, mainly wheat but also rye and triticale, for on-farm flour milling
Soils: Clay loams, mostly Chromosols
Image source: The Land.

Brendan Pattison is a broadacre cropping farmer alongside his wife Felicity and parents at Pinegrove in Marrar, north of Wagga Wagga in NSW. About 20 years ago, he transitioned to zero-till farming and added a stripper front, adopting a high-residue system that he observes as having significantly improved soil health. 

In an effort to bring more diversity to their cropping system and improve their soil structure, biology and carbon levels, the Pattisons started experimenting with multispecies cover cropping and shifted their crop nutrition towards liquid inject and foliars to scale back the use of acidifying synthetic granular fertilisers.

The Pattisons started dabbling with intercropping around 2020, inspired in part by a study trip to the United States with VicNoTill where Brendan saw innovative intercropping in action. Now about half the land they farm is intercropped. Their staple intercropping combinations are legume and canola harvested together and companion plantings with their wheat. 

Ever up for a challenge, Brendan is still keen to ‘ramp it up’ and push their intercropping even further. For the Pattisons, the benefits of getting ‘a bit more diversity’ in their paddocks are better soil fertility, less pest and disease pressure and their ability to get the most out of the rain they get each season. 

Location: Wiradjuri Country, Marrar, NSW
Regional Climate: Hot dry summer, cold winter/temperate sub-humid
Average Annual Rainfall: 520 mm
Property Size: 1,600 ha
Elevation: 300 m
Social Structure: Family farm
Enterprise Type: Broadacre grain and pulses
Soils: Red granite loam in the valleys ranging to quartz ridges, shale and grey granite in the hill country.  Primarily Chromosols

Ewen Beaton farms Kioma, a large mixed cropping and livestock enterprise in Toobeah, QLD. For more than 20 years, he has evolved his farming system to include a range of regenerative practices, with a focus on soil health and reducing chemical inputs where possible. He started noticing that input costs – not only the financial costs, but also the cost to the ecosystem – were getting ‘out of control’. Ewen says he has always been curious about soil and ‘how it works and what makes it tick’. It was through RCS’s Grazing for Profit program that he started surrounding himself with others who had a similar mindset. 

Ewen has shifted towards a biological approach to nutrition and inputs and has been experimenting with mixed intercropping and companion planting. He combines crops like chickpeas with linseed, and legumes with cereals, to better use resources and diversify outputs. While some challenges with pest management and seed grading have emerged, he has experienced positive results, including increased total yield and improved gross margin, especially from the chickpea-linseed intercrop.

Beyond yield, Ewen has noticed improvements in soil structure and biology, highlighting how intercropping can support both productivity and longer-term farm resilience. Though labour shortages have limited how much intercropping Ewen has been able to sustain, with the early wins he is keen to expand his intercropping in the future.

Location: Bigambul Country, Toobeah, QLD
Regional Climate: Hot dry summer, cold winter/sub-tropical sub-humid
Average Annual Rainfall: 600 mm
Property Size: 15,000 ha
Elevation: 320 m
Social Structure: Family run grazing and farming aggregation
Enterprise Type: Broadacre mixed farming with winter and summer rotations including wheat, barley, chickpeas and sorghum. As well as 1,100 head of angus cattle and a self replacing merino flock
Intercropping Strategies: Intercropping chickpeas and linseeds and legumes and cereals
Soils: Black soils, including Sodosols and Dermosols 

What are the benefits?

Optimise use of light, water and nutrients, while increasing diversity for soil, plant and ecological health and resilience.

Intercropping aims to unlock the benefits that complementary plant species can deliver when planted together, including:

  • Higher total yields and gross margins
  • Improved soil and broader farm ecological function
  • Improved plant resilience to pests and disease
  • Improved groundcover and weed management
  • Risk mitigation.

Higher total yield and gross margins: At its core, intercropping uses available resources like light, space, soil, and moisture more efficiently. By planting crops that complement and support rather than directly compete with each other, you can get more from each season and paddock.1XF Li, ZG Wang, XG Bao, JH Sun, SC Yang, P Wang, CB Wang, JP Wu, XR Liu, XL Tian, Y Wang, JP Li, Y Wang, HY Xia, PP Mei, XF Wang, JH Zhao, RP Yu, WP Zhang, ZX Che, LG Gui, RM Callaway, D Tilman and L Li, ‘Long-term increased grain yield and soil fertility from intercropping’, Nature Sustainability, 2021, 4(11)943–950, doi:10.1038/s41893-021-00767-7; AS Lithourgidis, CA Dordas, CA Damalas, DN Vlachostergios, ‘Annual intercrops: an alternative pathway for sustainable agriculture’, Australian Journal of Crop Science, 2011, 5(4):396-410. Mixed intercrops where multiple crops are harvested together can overyield, meaning that while the yield of each individual crop might be lower than if it were grown as a monoculture, the combined total yield per hectare from the crops grown together is higher.2Li, ‘Long-term increased grain yield and soil fertility from intercropping’; low-medium rainfall region in SA trails showed productivity and gross margin benefits from pulse-canola intercrops: P Roberts and S Day, ‘Intercropping improves productivity in low to medium rainfall environments’ [conference presentation], Agronomy Australia Conference, Toowoomba, 2022, accessed 9 March 2025. As long as the additional time and costs of grain grading and storage don’t outweigh the additional income from overyielding, intercropping can increase gross margins while at the same time building soil health. 

For the Pattisons, intercropping offers a chance to boost returns by adding high-value crops like chickpeas and lentils alongside their main cereals. These legumes can improve gross margins, with the exact economic benefits varying depending on yearly market prices.

Ewen Beaton’s biggest intercropping win so far has been a chickpea and linseed intercrop. The high value linseed yielded around 0.4–0.5 t/ha (10 t total) and brought in a bonus $1,000/t. The intercropped chickpea yield was slightly less by about 0.1–0.2 t/ha, but this was well and truly made up for by the additional return from the linseed.

Improved soil and broader farm ecological function: Intercropped plants interact both above and below ground, mimicking the diversity in natural systems, which can create a range of soil health benefits. Results will vary depending on your unique context, but some of the soil health benefits can include: 

  • Improved soil structure: A combination of different root types, such as the deep taproots of chickpeas alongside the fibrous roots of wheat, increase below-ground diversity and attract a wider range of biological activity. This diversity can support development of better soil structure and aggregate stability,3Li, ‘Long-term increased grain yield and soil fertility from intercropping’ with flow-on benefits for soil infiltration, water holding capacity and aeration.
  • Improving nitrogen efficiency and cycling: Intercropping with legumes that biologically fix nitrogen helps build the soil’s long-term nitrogen bank stored in organic matter, particularly for farms that rely more on biological nitrogen for fertility or are transitioning in that direction.4AL Fletcher, JA Kirkegaard, MB Peoples, MJ Robertson, J Whish and AD Swan, ‘Prospects to utilise intercrops and crop variety mixtures in mechanised, rain-fed, temperate cropping systems’, Crop and Pasture Science, 2016, 67(12):1252–1267, doi:10.1071/cp16211; YY Li, CB Yu, X Cheng, CJ Li, JH Sun, FS Zhang, H Lambers, L Li, ‘Intercropping alleviates the inhibitory effect of N fertilisation on nodulation and symbiotic N2 fixation of faba bean’, Plant and Soil, 2009, 323:295–308, doi:10.1007/s11104-009-9938-8; PM Chalk, MB Peoples, AM McNeill, RM Boddey, MJ Unkovich, MJ Gardener, CF Silva, D Chen, ‘Methodologies for estimating nitrogen transfer between legumes and companion species in agro-ecosystems: a review of 15N-enriched techniques’, Soil Biology & Biochemistry, 2014, 73:10–21, doi:10.1016/j.soilbio.2014.02.005. In well-functioning ecosystems, nitrogen can also be fixed by free-living nitrogen fixing organisms in the soil and on plant leaves. For more on nitrogen management, check out our Nitrogen Cycling and Efficiency Practice Guide.
  • Soil fertility and biological health: Greater plant diversity supports a wider range of soil microbes, increasing the soil’s capacity to cycle and make nutrients available to plants. This includes improved mycorrhizal associations as well as diverse plants scavenging for nutrients by exuding compounds into the soil that make certain nutrients available.5 RW Brooker, AE Bennett, W Cong, TJ Daniell, TS George, PD Hallett, C Hawes, PPM Iannetta, HG Jones, AJ Karley, L Li, BM McKenzie, RJ Pakeman, E Paterson, C Schöb, J Shen, G Squire, CA Watson, C Zhang, F Zhang, J Zhang and PJ White, ‘Improving intercropping: a synthesis of research in agronomy, plant physiology and ecology’, New Phytologist, 2015, 206(1):107–117, doi:10.1111/nph.13132. 
  • Water utilisation and holding capacity: Where water is a major limitation, the additional plant growth and biomass that comes with intercropping can be seen as competition for limited water. But intercropping can actually increase water utilisation, especially if root systems are complementary. Pairing deep-rooted and shallow-rooted species can increase overall access to moisture and improve yield potential.6Fletcher, ‘Prospects to utilise intercrops and crop variety mixtures in mechanised, rain-fed, temperate cropping systems‘; Y Fang, B Xu, L Liu, Y Gu, Q Liu, NC Turner and FM Li, ‘Does a mixture of old and modern winter wheat cultivars increase yield and water use efficiency in water-limited environments?’, Field Crops Research, 2014, 156:12–21, doi:10.1016/j.fcr.2013.10.013. More groundcover and above-ground biomass can also help keep the soil temperature cool and buffer soil water evaporation.7Soils for Life, ‘Planting with purpose, with Jill Clapperton’, Soils for Life, YouTube, 16 December 2024, accessed 20 May 2025. More broadly, improvements in soil health can increase infiltration and the water holding capacity of the soil, making more of the rain that falls available for the crops.

Tips and tricks: Keep in mind that the spatial pattern of strip or skip row intercropping will impact the residual effect of legumes in the soil, so you might need to change up the intercropping pattern between years.8Fletcher, ‘Prospects to utilise intercrops and crop variety mixtures in mechanised, rain-fed, temperate cropping systems’

‘It’s like having that rotation without having to rotate it.’ Ian Congdon 

For Ian Congdon and Courtney Young, intercropping by companion planting clover and cereals is a ‘low hanging fruit’, because it’s a simple and effective way to improve soil life and fertility without any major changes to their cropping system. Ian feels that intercropping balances out the nutrient extraction that can come with cropping, giving back to the soil and fostering diversity. 

‘In our organic system there’s always going to be something growing in there. So it may as well be something that we’re happy with and provides other benefits along the way.’ Ian Congdon 

Though it’s hard to precisely measure how much nitrogen the wheat gains from the clover, Ian shares they consistently get grain protein levels of around 12%, indicating sufficient nitrogen cycling likely supported by the clover companion in their low-input system. 

A major benefit is the green groundcover left after harvest, which provides high-quality livestock feed of straw, leftover grain and clover. Integrating livestock through grazing their cropping paddocks is key to their long term soil health strategy, so being able to shift between rotations effectively is a priority. The living mulch of clover not only supports grazing immediately after harvest, but also leaves an established clover stand that can be tilled in as green manure in the spring. This helps avoid the typical setbacks of a cropping cycle that leaves a paddock bare and exposed.

For the Pattisons, intercropping supports their ongoing transition towards soils that are driven by biology and plant diversity rather than by seasonal inputs. 

‘Different plants, different roots, different exudates, different biology.’ Brendan Pattison 

They intercrop legumes to consistently supply nitrogen to their soils and have observed faster residue breakdown and improved nutrient cycling since they started intercropping. Cultivating nitrogen with intercropping is one of the main reasons for choosing legume intercrops: ‘Instead of having to go and spread urea, we’d like to grow it,’ says Brendan. 

Brendan has seen water infiltration improve on their farm over the last 10 years, a result of both intercropping and the broader soil management changes they’ve made. He’s also seen carbon levels improve and with it the soil’s ability to hold onto water. They know they’re ‘getting the water in’ and now the goal is ‘to grow more with what we’ve got’. 

For Ewen Beaton, one of the main reasons for trying intercropping has been to get more legumes in the ground when cereal cropping for the added nitrogen they can contribute to soil fertility. 

Competition between intercrops is possible, and Ewen cautions that they did notice competition for soil moisture between a sorghum summer crop intercropped with cowpeas and lab lab strips. It was a particularly dry season and they felt that sorghum growth may have suffered from the added competition, but that it would have been fine had it been an average rainfall season.

Plant resilience to pests and diseases: Increasing plant diversity through intercropping is generally linked to reduced pest and disease pressure. While the relationship between the two is complex and not guaranteed, more diverse agricultural systems tend to more closely mimic a balanced natural system. Pests are better controlled by the presence of a greater abundance and diversity of beneficial insects, while diverse plant species create a less attractive target for pests and limit the ability of diseases to spread as far or as quickly as in a monoculture.9 MA Boudreau, ‘Diseases in Intercropping Systems’, Annual Review of Phytopathology, 2012, 51(1),499–519, doi:10.1146/annurev-phyto-082712-102246; T Rottstock, J Joshi, V Kummer and M Fischer, ‘Higher plant diversity promotes higher diversity of fungal pathogens, while it decreases pathogen infection per plant’, Ecology, 2014, 95(7):1907–1917, doi:10.1890/13-2317.1; Lithourgidis, ‘Annual intercrops: an alternative pathway for sustainable agriculture’. For more, see our Building Plant Resilience to Pest and Disease Practice Guide. 

The Pattisons have observed that disease pressure generally reduces in paddocks where they are practicing intercropping. Brendan has legumes grown as a monoculture crop that are getting ‘smashed’ by disease in spring, but disease pressure is ‘nowhere near as bad’ in paddocks that are intercropped. Intercropping hasn’t eliminated all pest and disease pressure, nor is it likely to, but it does seem to support their plant resilience and keep their pesticide costs down. For Brendan, ‘it’s something about diversity’.

When it comes to plant resilience to pests and disease, Ewen Beaton recommends going slow and steady, thinking about your whole farming system and using multiple practice changes. He’s noticed that if the ‘biological system is hammering’ then crops are on the front foot from the get go. They went cold turkey when they cut out synthetic inputs, and the resilience of their system hadn’t developed quite enough to handle the sudden change. He recommends weaning off inputs rather than drawing a line all of a sudden.

Groundcover and weed management: Intercropping can support a more ecological approach to weed management. Greater biomass and plant growth can create competition for weeds, intercepting more light and using more nutrients and soil moisture that weeds would otherwise use to get established.10 C Gu, L Bastiaans, NPR Anten, D Makowski and W van der Werf, ‘Annual intercropping suppresses weeds: A meta-analysis’, Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 2021, 322:107658, doi:10.1016/j.agee.2021.107658. Find out more in our Reducing Herbicides Practice Guide. 

Ian Congdon’s approach to weeds is more about managing the conditions that allow certain plants to thrive rather than just focusing on the weeds themselves. 

He sees the presence of certain weeds in a paddock as less about the weed seed bank and more about the conditions that encouraged those seeds to grow. Ian notices that the common weeds on their farm, like silver grass (Vulpia spp.), common storksbill (Erodium cicutarium), and Paterson’s curse (Echium plantagineum) tend to get out of hand when the soil conditions have degraded. By companion planting, the clover helps ‘buffer’ and maintain soil health at the soil surface throughout the cropping season and creates a better environment for desirable grazing species to get established post-harvest. The paddocks also have a background seed bank of annual ryegrass that tends to get established after harvest, becoming additional animal feed. 

‘I think that the role of that companion plant is more to keep the system in that kind of happy place…so rather than smashing it bare…you haven’t gone back as far, so you don’t have as far to come in terms of getting back to those desirable species.’ Ian Congdon

The Pattisons have found it relatively straightforward to select herbicide options for weed control in their intercropped paddocks, but have had to use different chemistry than usual to accommodate the combination of broadleaf and grass species in the same paddock.

Mitigating risk: Intercropping spreads risk by putting more ‘eggs’ in more baskets. If one crop struggles to perform due to poor market conditions or unfavourable weather, having a mix of crops growing each season can increase the chance of a successful harvest.11Fletcher, ‘Prospects to utilise intercrops and crop variety mixtures in mechanised, rain-fed, temperate cropping systems’. In Australian cropping systems, where rainfall and prices can vary widely year to year, this benefit can be just as important as the more direct benefit of yield and profit improvements. 

Intercropping can also mitigate the risk of crop failure by reducing lodging and improving yields from lodging-prone crops. For example, field peas intercropped with wheat can use the more upright cereal crop as a scaffold.12 M Podgórska-Lesiak and P Sobkowicz, ‘Prevention of pea lodging by intercropping barley with peas at different nitrogen fertilization levels’, Field Crops Research, 2013, 149:95-104, doi:10.1016/j.fcr.2013.04.023.

For the Pattisons, reduced risk is one of the main benefits of intercropping. They find canola is a ‘finicky’ crop at times that is prone to insect and disease pressure, so intercropping with it helps fill gaps in the paddock and also reduces weeds from taking hold. In 2024, frost severely impacted their canola, but the beans and vetch in the intercrop were able to ‘pick up the slack’ and maintain productivity overall. 

For Ian Congdon and Courtney Young, companion planting cereals with clover reduces the risk of having bare soil and makes it more likely they will have diverse, high quality livestock feed available if a cereal crop were to fail in a dry year.

On his family’s farm, Ian has also had success with lucerne and rye intercropping. Companion planting 2 kg/ha of lucerne with a rye crop established a full stand of lucerne under the rye in a year with good rainfall. Ian says that establishing lucerne in their area is highly dependent on rainfall, so intercropping with rye in the first season reduces the financial risk if the season isn’t able to produce a lucerne stand, since there’s still the rye harvest.

How to intercrop

Intercropping can be much the same as regular cropping but with some extra considerations, including: 

  • Seed selection and varieties
  • Sowing multiple crops
  • Termination and harvesting 
  • Seed grading and storage
  • Markets.

The extra complexity of intercropping can be managed with the right information and support, and trialling at a small scale can help you to smooth out issues before rolling it out more widely. This section shares examples of how other farmers have managed these considerations and implemented intercropping in their individual contexts.

Ian Congdon and Courtney Young acknowledge that the added complexity of intercropping can be ‘harder to come at’, but for them, the benefits outweigh the few extra steps involved in planting a companion crop. 

‘There’s more benefit than harm doing it and it adds interest and reduces risk.’ Ian Congdon

The Pattisons warn that there is ‘a lot to think about’ and ‘a lot to get right’ when it comes to intercropping. He’s had wins and some failed attempts at intercropping, but says when you get it right, it’s ‘fantastic’.

Brendan suggests doing trial strips initially to help manage some of the newness and complexity that can come when first intercropping. He also suggests doing your own research. He often investigates and trials a new practice for a number of years before doing it on a large scale.

Seed selection and varieties

The key to successful intercropping is getting the right mix of crops that will grow well together and can be graded separately.

Rules of thumb for intercropping mixes: 

  • Select complementary species: Intercropping works best when you select a mix of species that complement each other. Plants are more likely to be complementary when they use different resources (e.g. a shallow-rooted plant draws resources from the topsoil, while a deep-rooted plant draws resources from lower down) or when they support one another (e.g. one plant makes more nutrients available in the soil to the other plant, or builds long term soil health). But not all crops are compatible candidates for intercropping. For example, some plants can compete for the same light, space and nutrients too much or exude compounds that have negative effects on the growth of the cash crop species. 
  • Experiment to find what works for your context: It may require some experimentation to find the species that work for your system and context. Choose crops with different root depths, canopy heights, plant families or nutrient needs (e.g. a deep-rooted plant with a shallow-rooted crop, like maize (tall, deep roots) with beans (short, shallow roots). 
  • Go for short companions: When selecting companion plants, choose plants that are short, create good groundcover and, ideally, are drought tolerant. Farmer and rhizosphere ecologist Jill Clapperton suggests legumes like chickpeas and clovers. 
  • Choose intercrops with high income potential: Intercropping a crop with a high income potential alongside staple crops like wheat and canola can maximise the potential for overyielding.
  • Consider colour variation: If you’re intercropping for improved crop resilience to pests, consider plants with different flower colours, which will confuse pests more than single stands of one plant and colour.
  • Source intercropped or saved seed: Consider sourcing seed from paddocks that have been successfully intercropped, or saving your own seed. This may help overcome the limitations that come with seed varieties that have been bred specifically to perform in monocultures.
  • Select species that will make for easy harvesting and separating: If both species are being taken through to harvest, select species that will mature at a similar time, can be terminated together and have a similar harvesting height.

Mixing different varieties of the same crop can be one of the easiest types of intercropping to implement. Improving genetic diversity can support disease resistance and provide slightly different root growth patterns. Care needs to be taken to ensure varieties are still selected to mature around the same time for harvest.

Selecting species for mixed intercrops (where the crops are sown and grown together) can be challenging. Table 1 provides a few examples of mixed intercrops that have been trialled in Australian grain growing regions.

Table 1. Examples of intercropping species mixes that have been trialed in Australian grain growing regions.13C McMaster and S Strahorn, Intercropping and companion cropping of high value cash crops (wheat and chickpeas) in central NSW – how did they perform?, Grains Research & Development Corporation, 2023, accessed 8 May 2025; A Fletcher, J Kirkegaard, G Condon, T Swan, K Greer, E Bremer and J Holding, The potential role of companion and intercropping systems in Australian grain farming. Should we be considering them?, Grains Research & Development Corporation, 2020, accessed 6 May 2025; Sarah Fea, BEAR Biologics; P Roberts and S Day, ‘Intercropping improves productivity in low to medium rainfall environments’ [conference presentation], Agronomy Australia Conference, Toowoomba, 2022, accessed 9 March 2025.

Tips and tricks: Some species don’t mix together well. For example, mustard and peas use a similar root zone and brassicas like mustards are known to produce compounds (glucosinolates) that inhibit the germination and nodulation of some sensitive species like peas. Sorghum can also hinder legumes by releasing compounds, reducing mycorrhizal fungi, and competing for soil resources. Some strategies to manage this are relay cropping, where legume planting is delayed by 3 to 6 weeks following sorghum, and choosing more resilient legumes like lab lab.14 Sarah Fea, BEAR Biologics.

Ian Congdon and Courtney Young learned some important lessons about variety selection when they first started companion cropping. They found arrowleaf clover had great late growth in the spring, which meant it got up to hip height and jammed the reel and feeder house on the harvester. Safe to say they haven’t planted arrowleaf again. Instead, they’ve found that crimson clover tends to be shorter and finishes its growth around the same time as a wheat crop in their area and hasn’t caused any issues at harvest. Ian has also seen subclover do well when companion planted under a cereal for the same reasons. Planting hard seeded clovers is an important part of seed selection for them, because they want a clover seed bank to establish.

Ian is also keen to trial beans, such as faba beans,as a companion crop in the future to introduce a legume with more biomass, but will try putting it together with something that has a very different seed size that can be easily graded out.

When selecting crops to intercrop, the Pattisons’ main criteria are: 

  • Grain sizes that can be easily separated at grading
  • Varieties and crops with similar ripening/maturity times 

The Pattisons now do extensive mixed intercropping of canola and legumes as well as companion cropping legumes (mostly vetch) with wheat. It took Brendan a few years of experimenting to find varieties of legumes that married well with canola, but says when you ‘get it right, it’s really good’. Others in their region have since started intercropping this same variety of vetch with canola and the marketplace for vetch has been flooded a bit, so he’s now back to experimenting to find another high value intercrop that has a less crowded market. Brendan suggests selecting a variety that suits your rotation and market opportunities. 

The intercrops Ewen Beaton has trialled include:

  • Wheat and faba beans
  • Barley and faba beans 
  • Chickpeas and linseed 
  • Planting strips of cowpeas or lab lab between rows of sorghum. 

Each of these combinations have worked well, but the one that stands out for Ewen is the chickpea and linseed intercrop because of the complementary root structures.

Images 5-7. A faba bean and barley intercrop at various growth stages. Source: Ewen Beaton.
Image 8. A canola, vetch and bean intercrop. Source: Brendan Pattison.

Sowing multiple crops

The logistics of sowing intercrops depend largely on the type of intercropping you’re aiming for and the compatibility of species involved. To get started, use the equipment you have and adapt it where you can. Some rules of thumb for sowing intercrops include: 

  • Sowing depth: If seeds are mixed in the one planter at the desired rates (kg/ha) and sown together in the same row, it’s important to consider the ideal sowing depths for each crop. A compromise on depth may still result in good germination and you could assess this by trialling the depth on a small amount of seed first. If seed mixing isn’t practical, some farmers make two separate passes with the drill into the same row.15 SoilCQuest2031 and Integrated Soils, Grain Intercropping Grower Guide [PDF], SoilCQuest2031, n.d., accessed 23 April 2025.  
  • Fine seeds: For fine seeds, consider planting these with a spreader or seedbox after drilling the larger seeded species in the mix. If it’s before germination of the other crop, chains can be added to get soil-seed contact for germination. 
  • Flexibility with strips and alternate rows: Crops sown in strips/alternate rows can make it easier to sow intercrops at their own specific rates and depths. Some farmers have modified seed boxes with inserts to plant different seeds into alternate rows in the same pass.
  • Experimentation to work out rates: Getting rates right might take some experimentation. When deciding on rates for companion plants, the trick is balancing the cost of the seed and making sure there’s enough growth of the companion plant to reap the benefits. Farmer and rhizosphere ecologist Jill Clapperton suggests using rates of at least 6–8 kg/ha for clovers planted as companions with cereals. For other legume companion plants, she suggests using half the rate of the standard sowing rate for a monoculture crop, combined with a full rate for the cereal crop.
Image 9. An example of a simple way to modify a seed box to plant different seeds in alternate rows. Source: Sarah Fea, BEAR Biologics.

Find out more by listening to Soils for Life’s podcast and webinar with Jill Clapperton.

The Pattisons are currently planting at least half of their farms using intercropping each year. They prioritise the intercropped paddocks for early planting, usually before May and ideally in early April, to give the intercrops enough time to ‘get up and do their thing’. This is especially important for their legume companion planting with their wheat crops, which have the additional step of being sprayed out ahead of harvest. 

For Brendan, there’s no perfect mix or rate and he is still experimenting. He says companion intercropping mixes are like using spices when you’re making a cake in that ‘a little bit goes a long way’. 

‘A pinch of this and a pinch of that go a long way.’ Brendan Pattison

Ian Congdon and Courtney Young companion crop crimson clover (around 5 kg/ha) into wheat (80 kg/ha) by weighing out the clover seed, pouring it on top of the wheat seed in the planter, and mixing it in with a shovel. The clover seed is also inoculated with biostimulants (find out more about in our Biological Seed Treatments Practice Guide). While this method adds a little time and labour, they say the benefits outweigh the extra effort. In their first year intercropping, some clover seed was sown too deep (around 40–50 mm), resulting in poor emergence. Since then, they’ve adjusted to around 20 mm sowing depth and seen better germination. In the future, they’re looking to add a small seed box to the planter for better control of sowing depth or broadcasting and harrowing in the clover seed so it can grow in the interrow as well. 

Ewen Beaton shares that the first time he planted legumes and cereals together in an intercrop, he realised the rate of legumes was too low because they ended up being crowded out completely by the cereal. After adjusting in the following year with a higher sowing rate of legumes, both crops performed better. He used about a two thirds of a standard planting rate for the legume mixed with a full standard rate of the cereal. For the chickpea-linseed crop, he planted it mixed in the same rows at a sowing depth of 30 mm.

Image 10. Wheat and clover intercropped at Woodstock Flour. Source: Ian Congdon and Courtney Young.

In-crop management: Weed control is an important consideration when experimenting with intercropping since herbicide or pesticide options can be more limited in paddocks with multiple crop species. This can mean a greater emphasis on weed management at planting ahead of a cropping season instead of relying on in-crop control. Consider selecting paddocks with less weed pressure to make it easier when first experimenting with intercropping.

Ideally, intercrop species can be intentionally selected to compete with existing problem weeds in the paddock by choosing companions from the same plant family or with a similar growth habit of the weeds being targeted. 

Termination and harvesting

Harvesting intercrops can take a little extra planning at first, but with some minor adjustments, it often becomes straightforward. Rules of thumb for different types of intercrops are below. 

For companion crops where only one crop is intended for harvest: Design the companion plant to be shorter and shaded out by the cash crop to avoid any seed from the companion plant being caught at harvest.

The companion species may need to be terminated or set back ahead of harvest to avoid grain contamination. The timing of termination is important to preserve the maximum benefit of the companion while still ensuring clean grain at harvest. This is often done either by using selective herbicides or utilising weather. If the companion plant is more susceptible to frost and heat, planning for common weather events ahead of harvest can be used strategically to knock back the companion plant to avoid use of herbicides. If the cash crop is lower than the other species in the mix, some farmers use strategic roller crimping or slashing to knock back the taller companion crop and allow the cash crop more access to sunlight for it to finish its growth cycle and be harvested.

Where two or more crops are harvested together: Adjustments to the timing and height of harvest to suit both species may be needed. Harvesting settings (like header height and drum speed) may need tweaking to find a middle ground between the crops.

Crop combinations should ideally have similar maturity windows and keep in mind that intercropping can change the standard growth patterns of crops. For example, chickpeas intercropped with wheat often grow taller and branch less and so may need to be harvested higher than sole cropped chickpeas.16 McMaster and Strahorn, Intercropping and companion cropping of high value cash crops (wheat and chickpeas) in central NSW – how did they perform?.

Some farmers are finding that the synergies of intercropping can actually make harvesting easier! Examples include: 

  • Lodging prone or fine seeded crops can be held up by taller, more rigid plants for easier harvesting.
  • Ethylene gas released by earlier-ripening crops may accelerate the maturity of other crops, helping to synchronise intercrops for harvest.17SoilCQuest2031 and Integrated Soils, Grain Intercropping Grower Guide [PDF].

For Brendan Pattison, harvest is actually the most straightforward part of intercropping, even though he’s found that everyone else ‘can’t believe’ that’s true. The Pattisons have not changed their harvest equipment at all and when they harvest combined canola and bean crops, they harvest as they usually would when stripping canola. 

The Pattisons don’t have the storage to separate the volume of wheat they produce from the legumes companion planted with it. Instead, they generally spray out the companion crop in late winter or early spring with a selective broadleaf spray and harvest the wheat as a sole crop. Occasionally the legumes get frost damage and this avoids the need for the herbicide spray. 

Ewen Beaton used herbicide to defoliate his linseed and chickpea intercrop to help ensure they were both ready to harvest at the same time. The first time he harvested an intercrop, he prioritised harvesting as much grain as possible and let the grading process sort out the rest. 

Although Ian Congdon and Courtney Young intentionally harvest some clover seeds at the same time as the wheat by using a Hannaford screen on their harvester that separates out small seeds like ryegrass and clover and splits it into a second bin. Ian calls this bonus clover a ‘free lunch’ and stores it to be used at planting the following year. Some of the clover seeds left in the paddock regrow. They aim to harvest their wheat at a harvest height of around 30 cm.

Seed grading and storage

Grading is often one of the biggest logistical and financial barriers to intercropping since buyers usually require clean, single-species loads. But with a bit of planning, grading intercrops can be done with minimal fuss.

Plan ahead: Consider ahead of time whether you plan to grade and store each crop yourself or contract this out. If you’re going to contract out grading, get in touch early to line up timing with your harvest schedule as much as possible. 

Start simple: Choosing crop combinations with very different seed sizes that are easier to grade, such as chickpea-linseeds or canola-pea intercrops, can make a good entry point to intercropping. These combinations are less likely to require multiple separation passes or precision grading equipment.

Storage considerations: More on-farm storage might be required to store combined grain after harvest and then the separated grain once it has been graded. Keep in mind that some grains can’t always be stored together due to differences in seed moisture.

As flour millers themselves, having clean seed is a high priority for Ian Congdon and Courtney Young. They don’t find the bit of extra clover seed that makes it into the wheat bin a hassle because they have to clean the grain anyway. The decision to avoid similar sized seeds pays off when separating seeds. Ian and Courtney are careful to avoid species with similar seed size to wheat, like vetch, which not only complicates separation but can also negatively affect flour flavour.

In their first year of intercropping, the Pattisons made the call to contract out their seed grading. It was a way to simplify a new process and reduce the risk of bottlenecks. By the second year, they’d bought their own grading unit. They now have what Brendan calls a ‘versatile setup’ and can grade three or four seeds at once. 

Brendan avoids intercropping with similar seed size where possible, but acknowledges that intercropping sometimes throws up surprises. For example, in one paddock they had too much vetch growth in a lupin crop, and it became hard to separate. Brendan said he also found that chickpeas and buckwheat were a close call, but they did manage to grade out well.

Storage capacity is one of the main challenges to intercropping that the Pattisons have faced. They are currently in the process of investing in more on-farm storage to give them greater flexibility to expand their intercropping practice. Having their own grading equipment means they have more control over timing of harvest, grading and managing the silos they have available for storage. 

When it came to grading the first chickpea-linseed intercrop he grew, Ewen Beaton remembers having to convince the seed grader to take it on, but that the contractor did an ‘absolutely beautiful job of it’.

The main hurdle to intercropping for Ewen has been labour shortages and skills gaps, with staff who are new to the practice requiring extra time to learn the ropes.

Markets

Once separated and graded, grains grown as an intercrop are generally sold into the standard grain markets. Some farmers have sought access to markets for mixed grain, which avoids the additional step and cost of grading. Examples of these market opportunities are mixed grain livestock feed, cover crop seed mixes or niche ‘diverse grain’ markets for flour or brewing. For example, croppers Rob and Judi Hetherington from Lake King, WA, have secured a contract to sell their diverse and ungraded seed direct to a dairy as animal feed. Read more about Rob and Judi’s multispecies cropping practice and path to market here.

As with other regenerative cropping practices, intercropping may open doors for market differentiation in the future as customer demand for sustainably grown products increases.

Ian Congdon and Courtney Young operate a direct-to-customer cropping business growing and milling their own flour on-farm, giving them control over pricing and access to niche markets. 

For the Pattisons, acquiring a market for mixed grain would be ideal, but they haven’t found one yet. Their farm isn’t located near any extensive feedlots, and Brendan has also known animal feed buyers to prefer buying separated grain so it can be re-mixed at specific ratios.

Finances

A key motivation for many farmers trialling intercropping is the potential for overyielding and higher returns per hectare by making better use of resources (i.e. light, nutrients, water). The profitability of intercropping depends on two main factors: the variable year-to-year market prices for the crops you have planted and the extra costs involved, particularly additional grading and handling costs. 

Because market prices change year to year, the gross margin of an intercrop is likely to vary. If one crop fetches a lower price than expected, having a greater number of crops to sell can help reduce the risk associated with price volatility. In this way, intercropping can offer financial risk management by hedging your bets with more access to potential grain markets. Including higher value seeds alongside more common crops can be a useful entry point into intercropping.

For Ian Congdon and Courtney Young, companion planting clovers with wheat is ‘pretty cheap’ and ‘pretty quick’. The extra effort doesn’t impact their bottom line and has become a simple part of their farming system. In 2025, the clover seed cost about $12/ha at a sowing rate of 2 kg/ha with the inoculant costing an additional $0.56/ha. They usually gain the $12/ha seed cost back by harvesting and saving the clover seed from companion planting and using it where they need to top up clover in their pasture paddocks. 

While they haven’t seen a direct grain yield increase, they also haven’t observed any grain yield loss from in-crop competition from the clover. Companion cropping has the direct financial benefit of creating more feed for livestock – they’ve seen steers gaining 1 kg/day on the stubble and clover alone over summer. Companion planting with clover also opens up an opportunity for Ian and Courtney to harvest and sell clover seed, which they haven’t done yet but are considering. They usually harvest about 25 kg/ha of clover seed from a clover and wheat companion paddock and estimate they could likely sell it on at $2/kg. 

Some of the financial benefits are more indirect: the clover helps them manage ground cover and biomass under their organic management and is a pillar of their soil health and long term resilience.

‘The value in farming with diversity is that we will maintain a more healthy and productive system that will decrease the amount of inputs we will need over the course of our farming careers.’ Ian Congdon

The Pattisons haven’t seen any yield penalties across any of their intercropped paddocks so far. The canola-vetch and canola-bean mixes have yielded the same in tough years as straight canola, and in good seasons they have overyielded. On average, Brendan estimates that intercropping paddocks tend to yield about 15–25% more than monoculture paddocks. He still feels like he’s working out what the upper limits on overyielding are, which he finds very exciting. 

Beyond yield, Brendan values the broader benefits to his whole system with more diversity, more legumes and improved soil function, all of which support long-term productivity and profitability.

‘One plus one doesn’t equal two generally in all this sort of stuff.’ Brendan Pattison 

Mixing a high value linseed crop with chickpeas was the most profitable intercrop that Ewen Beaton has grown. His legume and cereal intercrop trials didn’t overyield, but he has maintained the equivalent profits that would be expected from a sole cropped paddock and expects that intercropping is generating benefits to soil health that will translate over time into improved profitability and resilience. As a mixed farm, the flexibility of grazing stubble and even using the mixed intercropped grain for its own livestock has helped build the financial case for intercropping.

Image 11. A wheat paddock (planted with a clover companion plant) getting close to harvest at Ian Congdon and Courtney Young’s farm, Woodstock flour. Source: Ian Congdon and Courtney Young.

Indicators of success

Being able to unpack whether intercropping is creating economic and ecological benefits to your farm means setting yourself up to observe and measure the outcomes of intercropping experiments. 

Yield and profit resilience: Increases in overall profit, as well as more stable profit between seasons, is one of the main indicators of success that intercropping is contributing to business resilience. 

One useful way to see if intercropping is boosting your farm’s overall production compared to growing crops separately is the Land Equivalent Ratio (LER).

What is LER? LER compares how much land you need under intercropping versus sole cropping to produce the same yield.

  • An LER greater than 1.0 (or 100%) means your intercrop is more productive per hectare than growing each crop alone. For example, an LER of 1.25 (125%) means your intercrop produces 25% more crop per hectare than if you grew the same crops separately as sole crops.
  • For example, if you were comparing the yield of lentil and canola intercrop versus growing lentil and canola as sole crops, you could calculate the LER accordingly: LER = (lentil yield from intercrop÷lentil yield as a sole crop) + (canola yield from the intercrop÷canola yield as a sole crop)

Soil health improvements: Increasing plant diversity should, over time, support improved soil health. Specifically, soil structure and nutrient cycling can be tracked to understand how soil function and nutrient availability are improving under intercropping. 

Consider baselining your soil health by taking soil tests for lab analysis (including total nitrogen if you’re intercropping legumes to support nitrogen cycling) and performing soil structure assessments like aggregate stability and compaction tests. For more see the Soils for Life Soil Health Assessment Guide. 

Ewen Beaton does extensive soil and plant tissue/sap testing to track soil and plant health over time, with the support of biologically minded advisors and agronomists. He has noticed really outstanding root growth in his intercropped paddocks, and has observed more nodulation on the legumes that were intercropped. Even just with one year of linseed-chickpea cover cropping, he observed improved yields in the following crop.

Ian Congdon and Courtney Young perform soil health assessments on their paddocks twice a year to track changes and improvements in their soil health, using the Soils for Life Soil Health Assessment Guide and record the results. To unpack their soil fertility, Ian and Courtney have found leaf sap testing to be a useful ‘real time’ insight into nutrient cycling. In addition, they test protein levels to track whether their crops have sufficient nitrogen availability. They regularly report 11.5–13% wheat protein, which they’ve established as their own benchmark. Along with observation of their farm ecosystem and the presence and absence of weeds over the season, they weave these tools together ‘to give us that information about the general story of the paddock’.

Ian suggests that part of intercropping is allowing crops to look ‘messier’ and says it ‘does take me a bit to not want those tabletop wheat crops’. But he also gets a kick out of seeing diversity and more colour in the paddock now. They’ve noticed that the bees love the clover flowers of their companion planting. 

‘We really want to value that joy and beauty of farming and running a property.’ Ian Congdon 

Brendan Pattison is a big fan of getting out in the paddock to monitor soil health. He recommends using a pitch fork instead of a shovel to bring up a square of soil to inspect soil structure, hard pans and the way roots are interacting with the soil profile throughout a crop cycle. The Pattisons also use a penetrometer to keep an eye on improvements in compaction and have seen their soils become softer since introducing intercropping. 

Once they started intercropping, the Pattisons observed the soil health improve compared to paddocks that have been sole cropped that same season. They also feel that the cereal crop following an intercrop has improved germination. Brendan chalks this up to the intercrop supplying a bit of background nitrogen, but mostly the microbial stimulation that comes from having diversity, and a legume, in the paddock.

Monitor soil and plant health, keep notes and consider sharing with others to help you work out how to interpret what you’re observing. Consider joining our Soil Health Monitoring Community on Facebook and other soil health monitoring initiatives! Find out more here.

Complementary practices

Intercropping is just one way to increase plant diversity. There are a number of other practices to build even more diversity in broadacre cropping that Ewen Beaton, Brendan Pattison and Ian Congdon and Courtney and Young have implemented. 

In addition to intercropping, Ian Congdon and Courtney Young plant a multispecies summer cover crops of sunflower, millet, buckwheat, peas and a winter mix of triticale, oats, chicory, lucerne, clover and radish They have also started planting 20 m wide tree breaks every 200–400 m across their paddocks. Their aim is to create multi-strata, permanent vegetation strips with diverse plantings to improve the farm’s overall biodiversity and resilience. Ian aims to think about ‘diversity across the landscape as well as in the paddock’.

Ewen Beaton’s goal is to ‘have living roots in the soil at all times’ because it’s plants that ‘keep the system going’. In his summer and winter cropping operation in QLD, this means establishing forage cover crops in both summer and winter fallows. Ewen recommends, ‘If you’ve got the opportunity to plant something, plant something. Just get roots in the soil again.’ He uses livestock to manage and make the most of cover cropping. 

See our Multispecies Cropping Practice Guide for more information on increasing diversity during fallow periods in broadacre cropping.

Further learning

There’s still lots to learn about intercropping, especially which crop mixes suit different regions, soils and seasons. Start small with a trial, observe what happens and be prepared to change things as you go. Even when things don’t go to plan, there’s usually something useful to take away and build on for next time you experiment with combining crops. Farmer and rhizosphere ecologist Jill Clapperton says she even starts by combining plants in her vegetable garden, just to observe how they work together on a small scale.

Getting started with intercropping isn’t just about figuring out how to sow and harvest more than one crop. It’s also about being open to trial and error, learning as you go and thinking differently about how your system works. 

As Brendan Pattison puts it, one of the most valuable things you can do is get off your own farm and go see what others are doing. Learning from others can help you avoid common mistakes, get new ideas and build the confidence to try something new. There’s no substitute for asking questions and seeing things firsthand. 

‘Make sure you do your homework. Know what you want to try and do and go and see people that are doing it. Ask questions. I just like to get in the car and go. There’s a lot of interesting people out there doing some interesting stuff.’ Brendan Pattison

There’s growing interest in intercropping across Australia, and more farmers are giving it a go. Stay in the loop by joining or creating a local farming group, going to field days or simply picking up the phone. The more we share what’s working and what isn’t, the quicker we’ll all learn.

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