Crop mixtures offer multiple advantages over mono-cropping. Newly developed advanced data acquisition and data analysis tools provide new insights into interactions and mechanisms in crop mixtures. This leads to a set of clearly identified, compatible crop partners. The new tools also allow for plants to be optimally allocated in field patches and for novel technologies to maintain such field patches. This results in ideal field sizes, shapes, and settings with regard to the ecosystem, biodiversity, resource use, and resource efficiency.