Intercropping is a planting technique that involves cultivating two or more crops at the same time on the same field. Intercropping will result in increased yields as the plants use the available space and nutrients more efficiently and help each other to develop. The associated crops should belong to different plant families, in order not to share the same pests and diseases and to have different requirements on soil fertility and nutrients and extracting them from different horizons of the soil. Intercropping creates biodiversity, which attracts beneficial and predatory insects. As flowering increases, intercropping also favors pollinating insects and thus beekeeping.

There are three basic classifications for intercropping: a) mixed cropping, which involves planting a variety of compatible plants together without any definite arrangement (eg. maize planted together with beans); b) row cropping or alley cropping, in which different crops are planted alongside each other in rows (eg. alternating rows of carrots and onions); c) temporal intercropping, in which a slow-growing crop is planted together with a faster growing one, which is harvested earlier, allowing the slow-growing crop to subsequently occupy the entire planting area (eg. potatoes and pumpkins).