[McGuffin]

Intercropping, yes. One type of which is called Three Sisters, where you grow corn, climbing beans and squash together.

It is of course harder to do on industrial scale, but it probably beats doing row monocrops on your backyard.

[Mistletoe]

In my experience it doesn't beat doing row monocrops in my backyard. It just turned into a big mess of plants shading each other, competing for nutrients, impossible to weed, etc. Never again. I'm native and I thought I would try it. Now I wonder how much of it is true and how much is romanticizing an idea that is a meme and sounds good.

https://growingfruit.org/t/3-sisters-the-original-survival-f...

"This story is an exaggeration which has been further glamorized by plant sellers and periodicals that cater to advertisers of natural or organic seeds and other products. In reality the practice was not widespread. The Farmer’s Almanac is rarely a source of factual information." - Richard

"Three sisters is a very inefficient way to grow corn. It is not the way many Amerindian tribes grew their corn as shown by the fields of corn grown by the 5 tribes of the Iroquois. It was used by some tribes, but only if they had corn, beans, and squash adapted to the growing method." - Fusion_power

Fusion_power usually knows what he is talking about, I recognize his name from Tomatoville where he is one of the best scientific posters and farmers around.

[Suppafly]

>Now I wonder how much of it is true and how much is romanticizing an idea that is a meme and sounds good.

I've long assumed that that's what is happening. Also, you can't just throw all three seeds in a hole and call it done, you have to start the corn and then later start the squash and then later start the beans. It's a whole process. It probably works in specific conditions, but in general normal yearly crop rotation to replenish nutrients with things grown in correctly spaced rows and such is likely to work better and be more labor efficient.

[Spunkie]

Down here in Guatemala I see a large portion of corn fields have also planted beans but I've never seen squash intermixed.

[bluGill]

The three sisters approach made it easier to grow crops as the climbing beans didn't need you to create something for the beans to climb. However it reduces your yields by a lot of all crops (the corn shaded the squash, the beans hurt the corn plant) and so it was a bad idea unless land is cheap and labor is expensive.

That isn't to say the idea is always bad, in some cases it can be good. You need to be careful as what seems good might have significant downsides that are hidden.

[specialist]

Exactly. Depending on the whatifs, balancing labor & op-ex vs yield might pencil out differently.

I'm very encouraged that we're discussing more than just maximizing yield. A luxury that the Green Revolution brought us. Huh, I hadn't thought of "permaculture" as a post-Green Revolution worldview before.

[Arubis]

Indeed. There's upsides to this beyond the convenience of location, too -- for example, planting basil alongside tomatoes helps repel pests.