CHAPTER III 



CROP AND FERTILIZER MANAGEMENT LEVELS IN FOUR SEQUENTIAL 

 CROPPING PATTERNS INVOLVING VEGETABLES 



Introduction 



Many horticulturists working with small-scale vegetable growers 

 in the tropics are concerned with improving crop production and profi- 

 tability of year-round cropping systems (49, 10?, 151) • These cropping 

 systems often involve the study of crops grown in numerous multiple 

 cropping combinations ranging from single crops grown seq^uentially to 

 crops grown together in various combinations (69) • Productivity and 

 profitability often depend on the management level utilized by farmers 

 which depends on the type of vegetable crop, its market value (24, I05), 

 and the capital, labor, ajid other production inputs that a farmer allo- 

 cates to produce the crops (I25). Generally, high value vegetable 

 crops such as tomato are grown using high management levels, whereas 

 low value crops such as mungbean are grown under low management levels 

 (70). 



Crop management in vegetable production is often limited to 

 single crops grown in monoculture (3I) . However, small-scale farmers 

 are often engaged in diversified production involving several crop and 

 livestock enterprises (31, 68, 69, 70, 80, 118, I38) . Therefore, a 

 research approach that integrates the entire crop production enterprise 

 with the farming system and the farmer's mancLgemen^ skills is required 

 to develop appropriate technologies for year-round vegetable cropping 

 systems. 



A conceptual model of the crop management approach in developing 

 appropriate technologies for vegetable cropping systems is presented in 



44 



