**4. Approaches to crop diversification**

The next sections examine the many techniques to crop diversification depending on land appropriateness, water availability, and market demand viz. regional, seasonal, and temporal [20]. The different approaches of crop diversifications are presented in **Figure 3**.

### **4.1 Horizontal diversification**

It is done by basically two approaches, through crop substitution and crop intensification. These two approaches have been the two main process of crop diversification. Crop substitution means replacing any crop which is continuously growing as a monoculture crop or gain a tendency of specialization. For example, during green revolution era there was a tendency to growing cereals crops only. Now a days the trend has change a lot in developing countries. Farmers are shifting from monoculture cereals based staple food to high value crops like vegetable, spices etc. There are several advantages of crop substitution which could be higher net returns, improve resource use efficiency (land and labour), break in cycle of pest and disease etc. On

**Figure 3.** *Different approaches of crop diversifications.*

*Crop Diversification an Effective Strategy for Sustainable Agriculture Development DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102635*


#### **Table 1.**

*Example of crop intensification and their advantages.*

the other hand, crop intensification is adding of new value crops to existing cropping system to increase the farm's overall productivity. To reap the benefits of agricultural diversification, we must move away from simple crop rotation and toward intensive systems such as multiple cropping, intercropping, relay cropping, and so on. Crop intensification helps in job opportunity, profitability and energy use efficiency [21]. Some examples of crop intensification and their advantages are discussed in **Table 1**.

### **4.2 Vertical diversification**

Vertical crop diversification, on the other hand, represents the degree and level of industrialization of agricultural production. In this approach famers and others add value to products through packaging, processing, regional branding, merchandizing to improve the marketable value of crops. Food crop vertical diversification is also described as the extension of post-harvest activities, such as processing and transformation industries, to allow food crops to be sorted, graded, processed into both food and industrial products, packed, stored, and transported to domestic or export markets [23]. The rise of processing and transformation industries appears to be the most important factor in rural areas in terms of creating revenue and jobs. To boost crop yields and income creation at the local, regional, and national levels, both types of diversification (*i.e.,* multiple cropping or horizontal diversification and agri-business or vertical diversification) will be required. The concept of vertical diversification is presented in the **Figure 4.**

### **4.3 Others approaches**


**Figure 4.** *Options of vertical diversification.*
