**6.2 Economics of maize inter-cropping**

In an economic analysis conducted by Sing et al. [30], it was found that the maize (green cobs)–urd bean-buckwheat cropping system had the highest net return of 303,000 INR per hectare and a benefit-cost ratio of 2:6, which was significantly better than the maize–rajmah system. Conversely, the lowest return and benefitcost ratio were observed in the maize–fallow cropping system. In terms of relative economic efficiency (REE), which is a comparative measure of economic gains over the existing system, all the intensified systems had higher economic gains than the maize-fallow system. Moreover, the maize (green cobs)-urd bean-buckwheat cropping system had the highest system profitability of 831 INR per hectare per day, while the maize–fallow system had the lowest system profitability of 238 INR per hectare per day (**Figure 17**).

Employment generation is a key indicator when assessing the sustainability of cropping systems. The data showed that the intensified systems added to the employment generation and generated more employment than the maize-fallow cropping system, which only generated 106 man-days per hectare to harvest the final produce. The relative system employment generation efficiency (REGE), which measures the additional man-days required for a diversified system compared to the existing system, revealed that all the intensified systems had higher employment generation ability than the prevailing system in the region [30]. Among the cropping sequences, the cultivation of maize (green cobs)-urd bean-buckwheat resulted in the maximum REGE of 168%, followed by the maize-rajmah system.
