Intercropping is a system of cropping in which farmers cultivate two crops of different statures in alternate rows. Growing groundnuts and black gram or red gram and groundnuts are good examples. Border cropping is a system of cropping in which farmers cultivate a major crop in the fields and a minor crop along the borders the fields. Rice and black gram are examples. Indigenous soil health care practices are those practices evolved, adopted, and modified by farmers based on their own informal experiments with an objective to maintaining the fertility and productivity of the soil.
Crop rotation is a practice in which farmers grow different types of crops in various seasons.
Crop rotation also implies that at least one legume crop should be incorporated in the cropping pattern in a year. Fallowing is an indigenous soil health care practice in which farmers let cultivated land rest for a certain period of time before using it again. Farm yard manure is a mixture of cow dung, cow urine, and paddy straw. Farmers apply farm yard manure especially to cereal crops such as rice, finger millets, and oilseeds such as groundnuts. Farm yard manure regulates the supply of nitrogen.