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 why do farmers grow different crops in a field?

Farmers grow different crops in a field because different crops may vary in nutrient requirements. This ensures complete and  uniform utilization of nutrients present in soil. In this way, it prevents the soil from being deficient of a particular nutrient. It also increases soil  fertility by maintaining microbial diversity.

Three different cropping patterns, namely mixed cropping, intercropping, and crop rotation are generally practised. It  prevents soil depletion, increases soil fertility, reduces soil erosion and the need for fertilizers. It also helps in controlling weeds and controls the growth of pathogens and pests in crops.

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They grow differnt crops because nutrients would be removed from the soil.
If the same crop is grown in one area, the nutrients that the crop uses the most will start to deplete. Crop rotation involves growing one crop in a field one season, and then growing another crop that uses different nutrients or even returns nutrients in the next season. Crop rotation prevents soil from losing the nutrients that are needed for plant growth.

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crop rotation avoids a decrease in soil fertility, as growing the same crop in the same place for many years in a row disproportionately depletes the soil of certain nutrients. With rotation, a crop that leaches the soil of one kind of nutrient is followed during the next growing season by a dissimilar crop that returns that nutrient to the soil or draws a different ratio of nutrients, for example, rice followed by cotton. By crop rotation farmers can keep their fields under continuous production, without the need to let them lie fallow, and reducing the need for artificial fertilizers, both of which can be expensive. Rotating crops adds nutrients to the soil. Legumes, plants of the family Fabaceae, for instance, have nodules on their roots which contain nitrogen-fixing bacteria. It therefore makes good sense agriculturally to alternate them with cereals (family Poaceae) and other plants that require nitrates. An extremely common modern crop rotation is alternating soybeans and maize (corn). In subsistence farming, it also makes good nutritional sense to grow beans and grain at the same time in different fields.

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