A Comprehensive Look at Intercropping Across the Value Chain
Together, these three webinars offer a holistic understanding of how intercropping shapes agricultural practice, soil ecosystem functioning, and food processing. They reflect IntercropVALUES’ commitment to co-developing solutions with farmers, advisors, and industry partners, ensuring that intercropping becomes a viable and valuable strategy across Europe.
Webinar 1 — Cultivating Species Mixtures Is a Viable Option, but Only with Adapted Agricultural Equipment
Thursday, 05 Feb 10:00 – 12:00 CET
Intercropping—growing multiple species in the same field—offers well‑documented benefits: improved use of sunlight, water, and nitrogen; higher yields; better quality; and increased stability under biotic stress. Yet, despite these advantages, farmers continue to face technical, organisational, and economic barriers when implementing species mixtures.
This first webinar focuses on one of the most decisive aspects: agro‑equipment.
The session opens with Laurent Bedoussac, who will present an overview of current intercropping practices, highlighting farmers’ motivations and the practical challenges they face.
Céline Chevalier will then share results from a study exploring strategies to overcome equipment-related barriers—such as mismatched seed sizes at sowing or desynchronised crop maturity at harvest.
Two complementary studies will enrich the discussion:
- Esther Fouillet on farmers’ equipment-management logics for sowing, handling, and sorting mixtures.
- Hadrian Pham on how farmers progressively redesign their machinery fleets as they transition into intercropping.
The webinar concludes with real-world illustrations from Fanny Raoux and Margot Leclere, based on co‑innovation case studies within IntercropVALUES, followed by an open exchange with participants.
Webinar 2 — How Can Intercropping Improve Soil Health? What Soil Indicators Tell Us
Thursday 26 Feb, 11:00 – 12:30 CET
The second webinar examines intercropping’s effects below ground. The coexistence of different species brings together diverse root structures and depths, which can positively influence soil chemistry, physics, and biology.
To understand and measure these changes, a robust yet practical set of soil indicators is essential.
In this session, specialists from France and the UK—who have long been involved in developing soil monitoring tools—will share their expertise on:
- which indicators are most reliable,
- how to measure soil changes with minimal labour and cost,
- and how these results can guide future soil management decisions.
Their insights offer valuable guidance for farmers seeking to track soil health in intercropping systems.
Webinar 3 — From Field to Food: Processing Intercropped Cereals and Legumes
Monday 02 Mar, 14:00 – 15:30 CET
Intercropping does not only influence crop performance in the field; it also affects the composition, functionality, and processing behaviour of harvested products. This final webinar explores these implications for the agri‑food sector.
The session will provide:
- an overview of ingredient functionality, with a focus on starch–protein interactions in cereal–legume matrices,
- insights into the nutritional value contributed by legumes in cereal-based foods,
- and practical examples showing how legumes influence baking performance and product formulation.
As IntercropVALUES enters its final stage, the webinar will also present recent project results on how intercropping affects processability and final product quality—particularly in baking and snack extrusion.
