Intercropping LER & Is Your Intercrop Worth It?

LER is the total land area you would need under sole cropping to produce the yields you get from one unit of intercropped land. It is the sum of each crop's partial LER (its intercrop yield divided by its sole-crop yield). An LER of 1.6 means sole crops would need 60% more land to match your intercrop — a clear advantage.

Partial LER of a crop = intercrop yield ÷ sole-crop yield. LER = partial LER of crop A + partial LER of crop B. For example, maize at 4 t (intercrop) vs 5 t (sole) gives 0.8, and cowpea at 0.8 t vs 1.0 t gives 0.8, so LER = 1.6. This tool does it for you and also shows the land saved and money advantage.

LER greater than 1 means intercropping uses land more efficiently than growing the crops separately. Above about 1.2 it is a strong, reliable advantage; around 1.0 it is roughly equal; below 1.0 the crops are competing too much and sole cropping would yield more per unit area.

Land saved = (1 − 1/LER) × 100. With an LER of 1.6, you save 37.5% of land — that's the extra area sole cropping would need to produce the same output. It's a direct way to express the efficiency gain of intercropping.

Not always — LER measures land-use efficiency, not money. A pairing can have LER > 1 yet earn less if one crop is low-value. That's why this tool also computes the monetary advantage: the intercrop's total gross return minus the better sole crop's return, so you see both efficiency and cash.

The partial LER is one crop's contribution to the total — its intercrop yield as a fraction of its sole-crop yield. Comparing the two partial LERs shows which crop dominates the mixture; a very unbalanced pair (one near 1.0, the other near 0.2) means one crop is being suppressed.

Pairs that use resources differently: a tall cereal with a short legume (maize + cowpea/groundnut), a deep-rooted crop with a shallow one, or a long-duration crop with a quick catch crop. Legumes also fix nitrogen, helping the companion. Aim for an LER above 1.15 in your own trials.

Start with the recommended ratio for your pair (often 2:1 or 1:1 cereal:legume) and adjust. If one crop's partial LER is very low, give it more rows or wider spacing so it isn't shaded or crowded out. Re-run this calculator with your measured yields each season to tune the ratio.

Yes — use any consistent unit (t/acre, t/ha, kg/plot) as long as you use the SAME unit for a crop's intercrop and sole yields. LER is a ratio, so the units cancel. For the monetary advantage, enter prices per that same yield unit.

Yes — LER is the standard index for evaluating intercropping in agronomy research and extension (used by ICAR, FAO and universities worldwide). It lets you compare very different crop combinations on a single, fair land-use scale.