The classical Banach space
$L_1(L_p)$
consists of measurable scalar functions f on the unit square for which
$$ \begin{align*}\|f\| = \int_0^1\Big(\int_0^1 |f(x,y)|^p dy\Big)^{1/p}dx < \infty.\end{align*} $$
We show that
$L_1(L_p) (1 < p < \infty )$
is primary, meaning that whenever
$L_1(L_p) = E\oplus F$
, where E and F are closed subspaces of
$L_1(L_p)$
, then either E or F is isomorphic to
$L_1(L_p)$
. More generally, we show that
$L_1(X)$
is primary for a large class of rearrangement-invariant Banach function spaces.