In brief
Growing several plant species together on the same ground at the same time, instead of a single crop in isolation.
In the whole: Principles at work 3 Obtain a yield, 4 Apply self-regulation and accept feedback, 8 Integrate rather than segregate, 10 Use and value diversity
What is polyculture?
Polyculture is the practice of growing many plant species together in the same space at the same time. It stands in contrast to monoculture, the industrial norm of covering a field with a single crop, and is instead closer to how plants actually grow in nature, where bare ground is quickly filled by a mixture of species rather than by one alone. Where it works, the mixture yields more from the same ground than any of its members would alone, an effect the literature calls overyielding.
The advantages come from difference. When plants with different rooting depths, heights, timings and nutrient needs share the same ground, they compete less and complement more: deep roots and shallow roots draw water from separate layers, tall and low plants use light at different levels, and a flowering species may feed the pollinators or pest-predators that protect its neighbours. Because no single pest or disease finds an unbroken sea of its favourite host, outbreaks spread more slowly. And because several crops mature at different moments, a polyculture spreads both its yield and its risk across the season rather than staking everything on one harvest.
Polyculture ranges from the simple to the complex: from two crops interplanted in the same bed, to the many-layered food forest, to the dense, succession-driven plantings of syntropic agriculture. What they share is the principle that a field of many is more stable, and often more productive per unit of land, than a field of one.
How Terra Humana understands polyculture
For Terra Humana, polyculture is more than an agronomic tactic; it is a stance. Monoculture treats land as a factory floor for a single output and pays for its simplicity with fragility, dependence on inputs and loss of life. Polyculture treats land as a community, and accepts a little more complexity in exchange for resilience and abundance. That choice sits naturally beside our conviction that health, in soils as in societies, grows out of diversity rather than uniformity.
We are also honest that polyculture is harder to standardise and mechanise. It asks more of the designer's attention and less of the machine. We regard that as a feature rather than a flaw: a return of skill and observation to the centre of how land is tended.
Polyculture in practice
At Sa Medada, near Jerzu in the Ogliastra region of Sardinia, Project Eden is planted as polyculture rather than as separated single-crop plots. Fruit and nut trees, supporting shrubs, herbs and ground covers are combined into layered communities, drawing on both permaculture design and syntropic succession.
On this dry, stony land the case for polyculture is practical, not only ecological. A mixed, layered planting shades and cools the soil, slows evaporation and holds moisture far longer than an open, single-crop field exposed to the Mediterranean sun. Diversity is, here, a water strategy as much as a biodiversity one.
Project Eden is a long-term undertaking, still in its early stages, and we describe it as such. We are testing which combinations of species actually hold together and produce under Sardinian conditions, and treating the honest record of what works, and what does not, as part of the site's purpose.
Sa Medada
What this looks like at Sa Medada
Many species already stand side by side at Sa Medada: the old olive grove, citrus, trial plantings of banana, mango, avocado, cherimoya, papaya and moringa, and nitrogen fixers from fava bean to Inga. That variety is deliberate. It spreads the risk of a dry summer across many species instead of one.
More about Project EdenPlants in this entry
Frequently asked
What is polyculture?
Polyculture is the practice of growing several different plant species together on the same land at the same time, in contrast to monoculture, where a single crop occupies a field alone. By mixing species with different roots, heights and needs, a polyculture uses light, water and soil more fully and spreads risk, so that a pest or a bad season for one plant does not wipe out the whole harvest.
How does Terra Humana apply polyculture?
At Project Eden in Sardinia, Terra Humana grows mixed, layered plantings rather than single-crop fields. Combining trees, shrubs, herbs and ground covers on the same ground builds soil, shades it against the heat and makes the system more resilient to drought and pests than a monoculture would be.
Related terms
Mentioned in
- Apple
- Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
- Bambara Groundnut
- Bill Mollison
- Biomass and material
- Carbon and humus
- Emilia Hazelip
- Energy: The Flow That Drives Everything
- Feijoa
- Fig
- Integrate rather than segregate
- Mollison's design principles
- Obtain a yield
- Seed saving and exchange
- Stacking in space and time
- Surinam Cherry (Pitanga)
- The Nutrient Cycle
- The Seed Cycle
- Use and value diversity
See this in practice
Permaculture principles at work here
The design principles after David Holmgren that this page puts into practice.
Sources
- Toby Hemenway, Gaia's Garden, A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture (2nd ed., 2009)
- Mark Shepard, Restoration Agriculture (2013)
- Bill Mollison, Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988)
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