What are the advantages and disadvantoges of mixed farming?

Question

What are the advantages and disadvantoges of mixed farming?

Answer 1

To me,mixed farming has to do with the planting of crops and rearing of animals for diffrent popurses.the advantages derived from mixed farming include the following.

1.It add to the income of the farmer since he has many to sell.

2.It is a form of asurance as for if there is no sells from crops, there will be sells from the animal.

3.Lands that are not good for crop cultivation cn be use for rearing or housing animal,that is, it ensures the wise use of land.

4.Animal droppings can easily be transfered to the farmland,which add to the fertility of the soil.

    So also the disadvantages could include the following.

1.The animals sometimes could feed on the planted crops if care is not taken.

2.It devides the attention of the famer.

Answer 2

Diversified farming spreads the risk from weather, market and so on while a single endeavor is like putting all you eggsin one basket.  

That said, here is my own personal experience.  When I was diversified between several different crops as well as livestock, I found that I was doing a lot of different jobs but doing none of them very well.  I was planting corn when I should have been vaccinating lambs, planting beans when I should have been worming lambs, combining wheat when I should have been putting up hay, putting up hay when I should have been fixing fence and so on.  I now focus entirely on the livestock.  While theoretically more risky, I do one job and do it quite well.  I've made more money with livestock alone than I ever did doing everything together.

Answer 3

Mixed farming?  By that do you mean instead of like a giant monocrop of wheat, or corn?

To me personally, there are nothing but advantages.  Yet I can see and understand the disadvantages.

I'm a small farmer, on a permaculture farm.  Meat goats, and meat rabbits have been our two major crops.  We are going to add chicken eggs, fruits (apples) and some vegtables, and flower, and tree starts next year.  

Disadvantages of the way we farm....I do not feed masses of people.  None of what I produce makes it to city folks, unless they come to my farm.  The way we farm is very labor intensive, as in there is ALWAYS something to do, fix, birth, or harvest.  

A farmer who plants a giant wheat crop can plant his crop, and then other than the occasional spraying for bug, virtually has his time free, until harvest (and then he will be working nearly 24 hours a day).  Not so for us....something is ALWAYS happening on our farm.  Vacation?  What's that!

Our livestock produces the fertilizer we need via their manure for our crops and pasture.  A mono crop farmer has to purchase his fertilizer, which is almost always oil based.  So our fertilizer is free....mono crop farmers pay for fertilizer.

Our manure fertilizer is good for the soil and helps build more soil.  Chemical based fertilizers are bad for the soil, and over the years will leave behind salts which can destroy the soil, if the farmer is not careful.

Because we mix livestock, pasture, and crops, our livestock is raised naturally, by grazing/browsing for themselves.  When farmers specialize in raising just one type of animal in a feed lot, that means a TITANIC build up of manure, and/or manure lagoons....that means major stink that can pollute the air for miles around.  

The types of mixed farming we do is family friendly.  There are "jobs" that even toddler children can do.

Giant mono crop farms are not family friendly, even teenagers can be hard pressed to find a safe place help out.

Usually with mixed farming there is less (or even NO) loss of soil.  Even if the farmer only mixes two types of crops, they can signifigantly cut down on the loss of topsoil.  Example would be one farm up here in Idaho.  Their farm is huge...about one mile wide, and three miles long.  

They grow crops in strips the exact width of one or two tractor passes.  They grow alfalfa hay in one strip, and wheat in the next strip.  So it's alfalfa, wheat, alfalfa, wheat, alfalfa, wheat, all the way accross the field.  The strips of the crops are three miles long.  

After the wheat is harvested, the alfalfa is still there, acting as a windbreak, and keeping the topsoil in place on the now bare wheat strips.   In the spring, before the alfalfa has yet popped out of the ground, the wheat has begun to grow like crazy.  So the wheat helps protect the topsoil in the alfalfa strips in the early spring (when winds are brutal).

When people are small farmers like myself, with a very "mixed bag" of what they farm, then they usually cannot afford, nor ever invest in the latest and greatest harvesting, or planting equipment.  Of course this also keeps small farmers out of huge debt for extremely expensive equipment.

Mixing the crops farmed (crops can be livestock as well as plants) usually means that it's quiet difficult for pests to get established.

An insect may adore cabbage.  But if the farmer also pasture raises pigs, he could raise pigs in one pasture, and cabbage in the other pasture, and switch them every year.  The pigs would turn over the soil, eat any cabbage roots, or rotten cabbage, and also expose, or eat any bugs that feed on the cabbage.  They would also leave great manure behind.

The cabage would grow where the pigs had been, and help prevent any pests, diseases, or worms that lived on the pigs from building up to high levels.  

Another farmer I know has a very large berry (blueberries) farm.  His berry field is a huge square, of about 40 acres.  All around the outside of his berry fields his has woods.  He plants a fast growing cedar tree.  The cedar trees are harvested, and he sells the cedar for firewood, but mostly cedar shakes for roofs.  The cedar trees provide a windbreak for his berry fields.

On our permaculture farm, we layer farming as much as possible.  I raise goats.  They eat the blackberries, and weeds that grow rampent in the fields.  This provides more grass available for the sheep and horses to eat.  This layering of animals that eat different types of fodder means the pasture can raise more animals than if I tried to raise only one type of critter.

Chickens will be returning to my apple/pear orchard.  The chickens eat any of the fallen/rotten fruit.  They also eat any of the insects in the orchard.  So I use no sprays, and have virtually no bugs on my apples.  So I saved money by not having to buy sprays, didn't have any contamination from sprays, and I got chicken eggs in return for putting the chickens to work keeping the orchard bug free.

These are just a few of the ways/idea "mixed farming" can help, and a few of the disadvantages.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 4

Mostly advantages which bohemian_garnet expressed.

But I may as well give you some of the issues; this is straight from a Nature article:

Application of any ecological approach to agriculture is fraught with uncertainty. Ecosystems are thought to maintain stability as a result of diverse species composition. Modern agriculture, with its single-crop monoculture system, is claimed by organic proponents to be inherently unstable and unsustainable. It is true that crops rapidly disappear from fallow fields as they cannot compete with weeds, but wild, stable monocultures of species such as phragmites, wild wheat, (genetically uniform) spartina and mangroves indicate that ecological stability is not understood. Furthermore, although mixed cropping (supposedly mimicking ecological diversity) can reduce disease, other crop combinations accelerate disease spread. Farms are land-management systems maintained to produce food, in which farmer activity replaces normal ecosystem feedback controls.

In short, there are certain unknowns; not all multicropping/polyculture necessarily provides a universal benefit (the primary one being fewer diseases).  Additionally, growing purely wild-type crops can be just as effective as multi-cropping.

The use of manure also has its problems, which are discussed in the article.

Despite this, it's important to stress that mixed farming overall is far more beneficial.  The important thing is to get the right crop mix.

Answer 5

I think Mike has the advantages and disadvantages listed pretty well.  Many crops supplement one another -- for example, rotating cotton one year with corn the next will keep the soil in better condition.  And weather conditions prime for one crop might result in lower yields of another, so "not putting all the eggs in one basket" is an advantage.  In my personal opinion, equipment cost is the biggest disadvantage.  Look up the cost of an international harvester and you'll see a large farmer isn't spending $15K on a piece of equipment.... it may be as much as $100K.

The first respondant's answer, "A farmer who plants a giant wheat crop can plant his crop, and then other than the occasional spraying for bug, virtually has his time free, until harvest " is ABSOLUTELY WRONG.  First, planting the crop isn't accomplished in a day.  A great deal of time is spent in preparing the fields (and equipment) and then getting the crop into the ground.  The crop has to be maintained throughout the growing season.  Equipment must be repaired and maintained.  Seminars are attended to learn better agriculture methods.  The "farm" must be generally managed, meaning seeds must be purchased, fertilizer must be mixed and delivered, and banking/purchasing must take place to head off the inevitable "murphy" visit.  When crops are removed from the field they must be packaged in some manner, be it in a truck, bale, trailer, box, or whatever, and delivered somewhere.  The myth of a farmer sitting on his front porch with wheat straw in his mouth, feet propped up, relaxing and waiting for the crop to roll in is just that -- a myth.

Answer 6

The advantages of mixed farming are, when one uses this in a sustainable farming method, that crops are healthier with less pest and disease issues and the land is also addressed as to keeping it and the local environment in a state of improvement, not depleteing resources and necessitating chemical intervention/ use. Methods like companion planting combine crops to take advantage of natures "odd couple" relationships. Look at the Native Americans and the "Three Sisters" (link below). Also of import are the added and mixed harvests of products that take advantage of multiple markets at varied times. Changing and rotating crops properly, as well as companion planting, is going with the flow of nature and nurtures the land which is a vastly important resource. Disadvantages would include the tooling and equiping of the monoculture farms whose tools would be almost useless or at minimum require major adjustment. This would require added expense or the need for more unskilled labor. Change is costly when so much is invested in one form of farming. Monocultures are established to take advantage of equipment (and it's design) to maximize yield with minimum personel, money being spent on that equipment to replace needed crew for field maintenance and eventual harvest. Monoculture is it's own worst enemy for a great many reasons. It relies on expensive equipment that can only be used for the most part in vast monocultural farming endeavors. With mixed farming the farmer requires more labor from people and less from equipment, and though that labor is often difficult to find at least it requires only minmal training. The other side of the argument is that with mixed crops, labor would not be in huge often unmet demand during a short harvest and field work (like migrant farmers), so a labor force would have work spread out more evenly (locally based) and farm equipment which has a huge initial cost or investment would be less needed. That equipment, by the way is the cause of a great many ills with respect to soil and the land in general. The plow we lived by for so long is the reason a lot of soil loses production value. Overtilling destroys the structure of soil but is almost a necessity with monoculture and other machine use.

     The argument for and against goes on and on but many people in the industry are beginning to adapt to the necessary changes with respect to monoculture. I think one important change though will be that of keeping products local, at least and as a minimum with keeping within out boundries many of the products we produce. That encourages a lower price to consumers if for no other reason than it limits dependence of fuel and shipping. Mixed farm practices cater to that philosophy by not jamming up the food industry with huge harvests competing and receiving low prices all at the same harvest time. It helps to localize our food sources.