With intercropping gaining traction among progressive growers, it’s often those at the grassroots who lead the charge. CPM speaks to Ben Adams, who’s been quietly trialling his own innovative mixes in Oxfordshire – fuelled by curiosity and practicality.
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But the only way to know for sure is to try.” BEN ADAMS
By Charlotte Cunningham
As growers continue to battle the twin pressures of tightening input costs and rising environmental expectations, many are looking beyond conventional practices to future-proof their farming businesses. Among these evolving approaches, intercropping is cropping up – quite literally – as a method that not only supports soil health but can also deliver tangible benefits to yield resilience and pest control.
Although far from a new concept, intercropping – growing two or more crops in the same field simultaneously – has become especially popular among regenerative and system-focused growers, but from peas and barley to linseed with oats, the combinations are as diverse as the motivations behind them.
Intercropping advocates say the benefits are multifaceted. Improved weed suppression, better nutrient use efficiency, enhanced biodiversity, and yield stability top the list. But does it stack up in commercial practice?
For Oxfordshire farmer Ben Adams, intercropping isn’t a buzzword – it’s an evolving, farm-first approach that balances regenerative ambitions with hard-nosed economics.
TRIAL AND ERROR
While intercropping has been in place for a number of years on the 380ha arable farm near Bicester, the journey to get there has been made up of trial and error and frequently refining his intercropping system, driven as much by interest as by strategy. “I’ve always liked to try things for myself,” says Ben. “I don’t really trust anyone else until I’ve seen how something works on my own land.”
His foray into intercropping started not with a formal trial, but with a simple observation. “I began using oats as a companion crop with linseed, mainly to help with flax flea beetle control,” he recalls. “That led me to peas and oats. In fact, I grew peas and oats together before I ever grew oats on their own.”
From those early experiments, Ben’s curiosity deepened. In 2022, he successfully applied to the School of Sustainable Food and Farming’s Net Zero competition, which funded a more structured set of intercropping trials in spring 2023.
“I ran nine different intercropping plots across 16.5ha,” he explains. “They were all zero-input and direct-drilled – essentially, we just left them to it until harvest to see what actually worked.”
The trials featured a mix of cereals (oats and barley), legumes (peas, beans, and vetch) and brassicas (mustard and spring oilseed rape). “Every trial included a legume, and some included two- or three-way mixes with cereals and brassicas. They were laid out as 24m and 48m tramline trials.”
Following harvest, the trial plots were all put into winter wheat, providing further insight into soil and system performance post-intercrop. “It’s not just about how the mixes perform in their own right, it’s also about the impact they have on the next crop.”
So what’s he learned? For Ben, it comes down to compatibility and system fit. “The best performer was peas and mustard. We use mustard a lot for cover crops and winter bird food mixes, so growing it ourselves makes sense – and it matured well with the peas. It just worked.”
He’s also had success with oats and beans. “They’re both tall crops, so compete well with weeds and are both natural breaks for take-all in wheat. Their maturity timings also align nicely.”
However, not every idea paid off. “Spring oilseed rape was a complete pain,” admits Ben. “Everyone said it wouldn’t work but I had to try it for myself; I won’t be doing that again,” he laughs.
Ben’s trials have always been led by what he describes as ‘gut feel and logic’, but he hopes that by recently joining the Nitrogen Efficient Plants for Climate Smart Arable Cropping Systems (NCS) project, he’ll be able to add in an extra layer of scientific rigour.
“I chatted to Skye [Melita] from BOFIN at the Oxford Farming Conference who pointed out that I was already doing most of the work required to be a Pulse Pioneer. By undertaking some additional sampling, I would be eligible to join the project and get paid for my involvement.”
RESEARCH PROJECT
Launched in 2023, NCS is a four-year £5.9M research programme involving 200 UK farms and 17 partners, led by the PGRO. The project aims to bring about a reduction of 3.4Mt CO₂e per annum, or 54% of the maximum potential for UK agriculture, through increasing pulse and legume cropping in arable rotations to 20% across the UK, thus replacing 50% of imported soya meal used in livestock feed rations with home-grown pulses and legumes.
As the project concludes its second year, research partners are bringing a sharper focus on practical insights into pulse-inclusive rotations and their real-world impact on nitrogen use, emissions and yields.
At Cranfield University, spring beans and oats have made way for wheat in glasshouse rotations, as researchers continue their deep dive into soil mineral nitrogen (SMN), greenhouse gas emissions and root development. Using cutting-edge gantry-based sensors, scientists aim to detect differences in wheat performance based on preceding crops – legume versus non-legume – and varying moisture regimes. Metrics such as nitrogen harvest index and yield will form key outputs from this controlled setting.
Meanwhile, ADAS has turned to the field – and the data. By dissecting historic YEN records and public sources, researchers are mapping the UK’s most common cropping sequences.
Their goal? To understand how increasing the pulse share might reshape nitrogen management and farm outcomes nationally. Pulse Pioneer trial data and SMN testing are also being combined to refine N recommendations for rotations that include legumes.
While at the James Hutton Institute, the Centre for Sustainable Cropping enters its 16th year, now equipped with ‘nitrogen-blades’ from PBL Technology to monitor real-time soil nitrogen losses. Early findings from life cycle assessments show that spring faba beans significantly reduce environmental impacts and boost barley and wheat yields – by 1.2t/ha and 0.9t/ha, respectively.
The team is also developing ‘CropGOBLIN’, a scenario tool to assess the benefits of scaling up pulse production to 20% of the national rotation.
Although Ben only joined NCS formally this spring, it hasn’t changed his process dramatically so far. “I’ve just adapted what I was doing anyway. The trials are the same in essence, but we’re capturing more information now and that’s what helps to make more sense of everything.”
While Ben is building up a bank of his own experience, he acknowledges the lack of joined-up guidance on intercropping is a barrier for others, something he hopes will be enhanced by being part of the project.
“There’s plenty of research going on but it’s all fragmented. It should be brought together as it’s hard for farmers to find clear, practical advice. That’s what being a part of the project should do.”
CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT
This spring, Ben is continuing to tweak his intercropping approaches. “We’re trialling canary seed and beans together now, partly because we want more of our own supply for supplementary bird feed. It all loops back to how we farm and what we require.”
For those considering dipping a toe into intercropping, Ben’s advice is straightforward: start with what fits your system. “We were already growing peas, and oats are a good break crop—so that combination made sense. Mustard was being used in other parts of the farm, so I just pulled it in. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”
He stresses that system fit matters more than theory. “If I had livestock I’d just wholecrop peas and oats together – really simple. But I’m a combinable farmer doing a lot of stewardship work, so I’m looking at crops like vetch and canary seed because that helps me meet my wider goals.”
For Ben, the motivation to experiment remains rooted in curiosity. “I just like finding things out for myself. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but the only way to know for sure is to try.”
This article was taken from the latest issue of CPM. Read the article in full here.
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