Designing a low carbon cropping system: Relay-cropping, a method of producing two crops a year

Problem

The main problem that we aimed to address within our low carbon cropping system was to reduce carbon emissions while increasing the production of biomass. Another objective was to improve the economic benefits of the system by growing a commercial relay crop.

Solution

The low carbon cropping system that we designed consists of 2 overlapping crops with shifted growing cycles (winter crop and spring crop). The first crop is sown in 2 rows out of 3. The second crop is sown in the free row while the first is developing. The harvests are shifted too, with the first harvest being on the usual date and the second in autumn.