Mixed Farming

Mixed farming is defined by the presence of more than one production enterprise on the same farm, whether crops and livestock together or several diversified crop types managed side by side.

Mixed farming

A farm operating more than one production enterprise, such as crops and livestock together.

Enterprise diversification

Spreading a farm's output across multiple products to reduce dependence on any single market or crop.

Integrated crop-livestock system

A more tightly managed form of mixed farming with deliberate nutrient and feed cycling between enterprises.

• Cereal or forage cropping alongside ruminant livestock grazing
• Diversified vegetable production alongside small livestock on smallholdings
• Rotations spanning multiple cash and forage crops without a livestock component

Where crop and livestock enterprises are managed together, manure from livestock can supply nutrients to cropland, and crop residues or byproducts can serve as livestock feed, and diversified rotations can benefit from the presence of forage crops.

• Diversifies income and risk across different markets and weather sensitivities
• Can spread labor demand more evenly across the year
• Can enable nutrient or feed cycling between enterprises when deliberately managed

• Requires managing the skills, labor, and capital demands of more than one enterprise
• May limit the scale efficiencies achievable by a specialized single-enterprise operation
• Synergies between enterprises are not automatic and require coordinated management

Mixed farming is practiced worldwide, from smallholder systems common in many developing regions to diversified farms within industrialized agriculture. The extent of integration between enterprises varies widely from farm to farm.