Tag Archives: Dan Towery

The Germ Seed of Cover Crop Adoption in the US – Part 12

Cover Crop Adoption – Expanding Geometrically as Knowledge Expands Exponentially

“Planting annual ryegrass in the fall and seeing nothing come up is greatly disappointing,” said Jamie Scott, a 3^rd generation Indiana farmer. “At first, cover crop experts chalked it up to planting too late, for example, or not enough fall rain to germinate the crop, or winterkill – getting frozen out in a harsh winter. That was in the early 2000s,” he added. “That was back when there was still a lot to learn about cover crops. And we’re still learning.”

By 2010, after extensive field trials and research, agronomists discovered that there could be residual herbicide in the field that prevented cover crops from taking root. “We would spray herbicides on fields in the fall to control winter annuals,” said Jamie, now a 20-year veteran of cover crop use. “And by the end of the winter, the effectiveness would have lapsed. But companies have come out with longer lasting herbicides that will keep weeds down for a year,” he added. “That’s great if you want the lasting effect, but it’s a problem if you plan to use a cover crop the following year.”(Check out this flyer)

Jamie is among a growing number of Midwest farmers who have expertise on how to successfully manage cover crops. After their first year, trying it out on three fields, the Scotts went all in, and now no-till and cover crop their entire 2000 acres. He has helped to pioneer aerial application of cover crop seeds, after experiencing how difficult it is to consistently get a cover crop planted after fall harvest.

“In our second year with cover crops, we tried a variety of planting methods. The third year, with a lot of advice from Mike Plumer and Dan Towery, we were putting the seed on with aircraft. We flew it on prior to harvest and thus gained weeks on the planting date. We tried using a helicopter one year, but shortly realized its shortcomings,” he continued. “We were trying to save a few pennies per load and ended up losing dollars on the other end.”

As the years went by, the knowledge about when and how to fly on seed kept growing, and Jamie has presented to national audiences with details needed to get started. As a result, Jamie started a side business – Scott’s Cover Crops LLC – in order to help other growers who now wanted seed applied earlier in the fall. “At the start, it didn’t really interfere too much with our farming operation,” Jamie said, “and my dad handled that for a month while I organized the cover crop application for customers.”

“But now it’s become almost a year-round business,” he explained. “As a turnkey operation, I manage the seed mix purchase and delivery, the aerial application and the termination of it in the spring,” he said, “and among the clients I’ve got in my cell phone, you’re looking at more than 100,000 acres.” That amounts to over 400 farmers in Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan.

Jamie is enthusiastic in terms of describing the changes in the industry in his lifetime. “I compare what happens to an individual who doesn’t care for themselves to that of the ag industry,” he said. “When I get to racing around during a busy time and I don’t eat right, I’m gonna pay for it. If I do that year after year, I run a higher and higher risk for some kind of health scare – heart attack or cancer, for example. Well, the same is true for farming. We’ve run up against a health scare, in which we’ve run down the quality of the soil and polluted the water and air in the process.”

In addition to his work in the field, Jamie has also been active as a cover crop educator, attending trade shows and introducing newcomers to cover crops, just as he was introduced 20 years ago. He is also the Chairman of his county’s Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD), as well as being Vice-President of the statewide association of SWCDs. In that work over the past years, he has continued to learn about the partnerships that have formed to better protect the precious resources. Two in particular that he has worked with: Bob Barr, a scientist working for the Center for Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Jennifer Tank, PhD, Director of Notre Dame University’s Environmental Change Initiative. “Those people, and their universities, are helping all of us to understand the value of capturing carbon in the soil, keeping nutrients in the field, and thus improving the quality of watersheds that eventually feed the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico.”

The Germ Seed of Cover Crop Adoption in the US – Part 9

Remember this bumper sticker: Every Day is Earth Day for Farmers?

It was a reminder to tree-huggers who, since the first Earth Day (1970), had been wagging their fingers at farmers for being “bad for the environment.” Farmers, for their part, have been equally suspicious of environmentalists for wanting to restrict farm livelihoods with unrealistic government regulations.

Given that animosity and suspicion, it seemed unlikely that a partnership might ever form between farmers and environmentalists. But that is exactly what happened in the early 2000s, after The Nature Conservancy (TNC) had identified the Tippecanoe River watershed in Indiana among its top 10 priorities in America, in terms of threats to aquatic wildlife. They showed how sediment in the runoff from fields adjacent to the Tippecanoe River were killing freshwater mussels and other aquatic species in northwestern Indiana’s watershed.

Dan Towery, who by then worked as a Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) agronomist and educator for the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC) in West Lafayette, Indiana, witnessed the historic partnership in real time. An Illinois native and graduate from Western Illinois University and, later, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dan had started his professional agronomy career in 1980, with NRCS.

Recalling those earlier days, Dan said the early ‘80s was when no-tilling began to attract the attention of agronomists and innovative growers. Given the erosion problems and loss of organic matter since the 1950s, people awoke to the value of no-till, and leaving plant residue on the soil after planting. Besides reducing erosion, no-till farming also reduces the number of tillage trips, thereby reducing fuel consumption as well as soil compaction. Likewise, it sets the stage for increasing organic matter and healthier soil biology, leaving soil intact and decomposing plants to be consumed by earthworms, fungi, and healthy bacteria.

Dan credits Larry Clemons, a conservation organizer for Indiana TNC, with the skills to bring together a diverse partnership to address the problem of freshwater pollution. The Indiana Department of Environmental Management was included, as were various land trust and environmental organizations, Soil and Water Conservation Districts, Purdue University, corporations, and landowners, some whose activities impacted the river’s health. By the time Dan started at CTIC, it was already part of that effort. It was he who suggested the use of annual ryegrass as part of TNC’s plan to reduce runoff from fields.

Dan was introduced to the Oregon Ryegrass Commission administrator, Bryan Ostlund, in 2004 when Bryan was in the Midwest meeting with Mike Plumer and a number of growers, looking at early cover crop test plots on small farm acreage, using annual ryegrass.

By then, annual ryegrass had demonstrated its worthiness as a cover crop, and that was one of the primary ways in which TNC addressed agricultural impacts to the Tippecanoe. Buffer strips planted along the river eliminated most of the riverbank collapse. Cover crops in adjacent fields reduced or eliminated soil. But more importantly, it kept agricultural products (fertilizer, chemicals, animal waste) from leaching into nearby waterways. Since then, continued conservation efforts have begun to make progress in cleaning up the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, and the Gulf of Mexico.

Towery formed his own company in 2006 – Ag Conservation Solutions – and became a contractor for the Ryegrass Commission, collaborating closely with Mike Plumer. Working solo and as part of a team, Dan and Mike worked passionately, if not tirelessly, as advisors, facilitators, educators, and networkers. Sadly, Plumer died in 2017, and Dan continues his work to this day.

In terms of their outreach and education, both Dan and Mike were active in organizations – both ag and conservation related – that helped define best practices. Some of their advocacy work helped stimulate more financial incentives for those reluctant to try cover crops. Some of their work helped to shape environmental and ag policy, including the annual Farm Bill passed by Congress.

Even as a good teacher, Dan has also been the first to admit that his success has hinged on his ability to listen and to learn. “And among the greatest teachers,” he said, “are those that live the closest to the soil.” It is in that respect that Dan has come to be a champion of “regenerative agriculture.”

Annual Ryegrass – the Germ Seed of Cover Crop Adoption in the US – Part 8

New Equipment to Deliver Seed to the Soil; New Research about Ryegrass as a Cover Crop – Part 2

After meeting, the two university extension agents, Mark Mellbye from Oregon and Mike Plumer from Illinois, established a quick and easy rapport, which was key to the cover crop campaign. On Mark’s first visit, after meeting Mike, they traveled to Junior Upton’s land in hilly, southeastern Illinois. Junior had agreed to be a test farm for annual ryegrass as a cover crop. Both he and Plumer were experienced by then with no-till, and both had been experimenting with cover crops. Plumer had brought his own seed drill to plant annual ryegrass seed on Junior’s place in the fall, after the corn was harvested. Mark had arranged for Oregon seed to be given to Junior for the test plot.

“It took a lot of time to modify equipment for the no-till environment,” Mark said. “It was more than a decade before you would find planter/drills that could clear away excess residue from the row, open and close a slit in the earth for the seed and be able to maintain a uniform seed planting depth. It was a specialty piece of equipment, and while some innovators would modify their existing planters, buying a new one was part of farmers’ resistance to cover cropping.

Two other discoveries helped that issue. First, innovators showed success using planes to broadcast annual ryegrass seed. While it took more seed per acre with broadcasting than a drill, it was quick, it didn’t require a new equipment purchase, and it could be done without tying up a farmer’s time.

A second type of broadcasting seed was also developed, using high-clearance equipment with modified spreaders.

In both cases, a major benefit to aerial or broadcast seeding was that the window for planting a cover crop was opened considerably. Though experimentation, the early adopters found that seed could be sown while the corn or beans were still in the field. Yes, some of it would lodge in foliage and perhaps the coverage was less uniform than with a drill. And, yes, there was less seed-to-soil contact ideal for germination, especially if there wasn’t sufficient rain to establish the cover crop. But compared to the cost of acquiring specialized drill equipment, and the impracticality of planting cover crops after harvest, the cost of buying an extra 10 pounds of seed per acre was insignificant. (see the free management guide)

The second hurdle was to learn enough about the behavior of annual ryegrass as a cover crop to have more confidence talking to potential customers about what to expect and how to manage the crop. This phase was the one where Mark logged the most time. “I made more than 30 trips to the Midwest over a five-year period, during which I worked with Mike and others on gathering data on annual ryegrass research plots in nine different Midwest locations,” Mark said.

The research was in two basic areas: testing different annual ryegrass varieties – some brand new – and then how each variety responded to recommended doses of herbicide. Each of the nine plots was a minimum of five acres, and data was collected on repeated trials over a period of five years. What came out of the research, in addition to which varieties were the hardiest and which the easiest to manage, was the new understanding we have about the potential for herbicide “carryover” from a prior year’s weed control program, which can negatively impact the start of a new cover crop the following year. You can read more about that here. Mark said that Oregon seed growers provided all of the seed for the trials as well.

“During the herbicide trials, we got additional support from industry partners like BASF, Bayer and Monsanto,” Mark added. “And, of course, the contribution of land, time and equipment on the part of the partner farmers in the Midwest was of tremendous value.”

“The final hurdle to overcome was resistance to change,” Mark continued. “And that’s an ongoing effort. What truly helped was getting some research done, getting people like Mike Plumer and Dan Towery involved as educators. Then, beginning in 2010, the Oregon Commission began funding an outreach effort focused on education, not sales. We started with a series of annual ryegrass publications (click here), and because of our widespread research trials, ag media reporters and editors looked at the data and began to profile innovators like Junior Upton, Jamie Scott, Dan DeSutter and others.” These were the early adopters who became champions of no-till, cover crops and annual ryegrass.

“Each year,” Mark added, “me and others from Oregon would also go to the major industry trade shows. Each year, the interest in cover crops grew and the word of mouth provided a big shift in how the public viewed this new crop management practice.”

Likewise, each year, dozens of field day demonstrations would be held, where cover crops were being used and where the grower, and either Plumer or Towery, would give background and details for those with questions.

During the same time period, the Commission also produced a series of instructive videos on various aspects of growing and managing annual ryegrass as a cover crop. You can find those here.

In the next couple of blogs, we’ll introduce Dan Towery, a consultant with an amazing career devoted to conservation agriculture. His contributions, like Plumer’s and Mellbye’s, have helped thousands of growers ease into cover crops, with good advice and hands-on experience.

Dan Perkins – A New Ryegrass Team Member

“Cover Crop Guy” Dan Perkins was still in college when the Oregon Ryegrass Commission began its cover crop initiative in the Midwest. He recently became the newest member of the ryegrass cover crop team, and his youthful exuberance and depth of practical knowledge will be of great use to us and those who wish to know more about cover crops.

Since graduating in 2001 or 02, he’s received a dual Masters degree in Environmental and Political Science. An enduring desire to farm materialized when he and wife, Julie, moved to DeMotte, Indiana with their first son, purchased 20 acres and started Perkins’ Good Earth Farm.

While the organic farm business was growing roots, Dan went to work for Jasper County Soil and Water Conservation District, where he earned a Certified Crop Adviser designation.

After a decade at the SWCD, he decided the family (now with a daughter and three sons) and the business (with a successful Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, client base) needed more of his attention.

Image may contain: 5 people, people smiling, people sitting, hat, child and outdoor

We’re very glad to have Dan join our team as a consultant. The loss of Mike Plumer a couple years ago was hard, and Dan won’t be able to fill his shoes. But, in addition to other team members Dan Towery and Mark Mellbye, Dan brings new perspectives from a different generation of farmers.

Click here to see a website he’s developed with his wife for their farm.

Click here to see an example of a video on one aspect of cover cropping: interseeding.

Exceeding with Interseeding

When you think about planting this spring, consider whether you might want to include annual ryegrass seed in the mix.

More producers are adding an annual ryegrass seeding in late spring, planted between rows after corn has reached mid calf to knee height.

Interseeding makes sense for a number of reasons. First, it’s a more reliable time to plant, rather than the fall, worrying about whether the weather will hold out long enough to establish a cover crop before freeze up.

Annual ryegrass will germinate quickly between the young corn crop, if there’s enough moisture. When the corn grows tall enough to shade the cover crop, the annual ryegrass goes dormant for the summer. Then, after harvest, the ryegrass takes off with whatever light is left in the fall. Having established it in the spring, there is an established root system, so the growth in the fall can be significant….perhaps even enough to graze, if that’s in your plan.

Interseeded cover crops have a better chance of wintering over because they were established early in the year. The crop will be there in the spring after the snow’s gone, and you can graze it again before killing it at about this time of year, before planting corn again.

Dan Towery, a longtime consultant to the Oregon Ryegrass Commission and a pioneer in cover crop agronomy, is an expert on interseeding in the Midwest. Any questions, give him a call. In Indiana, he’s at 765-490-0197.

More Buzz about the Value of Cover Crops

“The good news is, soil will improve every year you grow a cover crop,” said Dan Towery, a crop consultant, and owner of Ag Conservation Solutions, living in West Lafayette, Ind.. “How soon you see measurable yield improvement depends on field history and what limiting factors, such as weather, are present in a year. For example, soils that are low in organic matter will benefit faster from cover crops.”

His comments are part of a longer article in the Farm Journal online. Click here to view the whole article.

Ken Ferrie is also interviewed for the article. Ferrie, Farm Journal’s Field Agronomist said “It might take many years to make big changes in soil health, but in some situations, you might see improvement (earlier than that.). For example, he cited a study in which annual ryegrass as a cover crop improved carbon content, bulk density and water infiltration IN THE FIRST YEAR!.

“As with any new practice, you’ll be eager to determine whether cover crops are having an impact,” Ferrie says. “Your soil physical provides a benchmark so you can follow up later and see if soil health is improving.”

Another farmer and rancher, Gabe Brown, talked about the benefits of cover crops in North Dakota. “You should use covers to address your resource concerns,” advises Brown. For the past two decades, he’s used cover crops to increase diversity, build organic matter, and improve water infiltration and the water-holding capacity of his soils.

“We look at each field separately and determine what the resource concern of each field is,” he says.

But make sure you choose a cover crop with a lot of forethought and advice from others with experience. Otherwise, you may be inviting failure or added problems. “Cover crops take more management, not less,” said Mike Plumer, who died last Christmas after dedicating 50 years to soil health and farmer education. “Farmers have to learn how cover crops react on their own fields.”

Plumer advised producers to start small with cover crops – perhaps a 20 acre plot or so, before “before incorporating on the entire farm.”

Towery and Kok to Present at NNTC on Cover Crop Variety

The upcoming 2018 National No-Till Conference in Louisville, KY (Jan. 9 – 12) will feature some familiar faces, but with them comes new information about how to make cover crops work for you. Here are two of the classroom presentations you may wish to schedule.

Dan Towery and Hans Kok have been educating people on cover crop choices for close to 20 years. Towery helped to introduce “interseeding” of cover crops into standing corn and beans about six years ago. This year, Iowa farmer Loran Steinlage will discuss his experience with interseeding, and the increases in crop production as a result.

Here’s a link to the whole 2018 NNTC program

Annual Ryegrass Helps Weed Control in No-Till Acreage

There are times when evidence from on-farm research, from growers, differs from evidence from university plots. Earlier this year, the long brewing animosity over annual ryegrass emerged again, when Purdue University weed scientist Bill Johnson again claimed that the cover crop is a tough-to-control weed.

Evidence from the field, going back 20 years, suggests otherwise. In a No-Till Farmer article earlier this year, magazine founder and editor Frank Lessiter said that growers tend to follow what works, No-Till Farmer’s benchmark study last year found that 28% of growers seeded annual ryegrass as a cover crop in 2016.

Mike Starkey, former president of the Illinois Soil and Water Conservation District Association, said Purdue has unfairly painted annual ryegrass as a nuisance. In his experience, no-tilling 2,550 acres and using annual ryegrass as a cover crop on all but a sliver of his cover cropped acres, he has found no problem controlling annual ryegrass. In fact, he said that annual ryegrass helps to control other weeds in his fields. “We don’t have many weed concerns, but annual ryegrass suppresses the weeds we do have,” says Starkey. “It also scavenges nitrogen, improves our soil structure and aids in the movement of air and water in the soil.”

Dan Towery has promoted annual ryegrass and a host of other cover crops in his decades of work as an agronomist and crop consultant.He said he thinks that Purdue has gone overboard with their objections to annual ryegrass. He maintains some Purdue folks rely too much on what they’ve learned from their own research plots, are not big believers in no-till and have refused opportunities to see how growers are making annual ryegrass work.”

Interseeding Annual Ryegrass into Corn

The increasingly popular practice of interseeding annual ryegrass and other cover crops into spring corn continues to receive attention. Why?

In the Northern Corn Belt, growers find efficiency to seed cover crops in the spring, rather than the fall, when the window of opportunity for planting is very slim – between harvest and onset of winter.
The annual ryegrass gets established in young corn, but goes nearly dormant when the corn foliage creates too much shadow for more cover crop growth beneath it.
Interseeding annual ryegrass does not compete with the corn for nutrients or moisture, given that it goes nearly dormant.
Once the harvest is complete in the fall, the annual ryegrass picks up where it left off in the spring. The fact that the cover crop is already well established increases the chances it will survive the winter weather.

It’s important to interseed the cover crop into corn that is about knee high. Dan Towery, an expert in interseeding, says that you want to let the corn get at least to V4 stage before planting the ryegrass. Otherwise it might compete with the corn for sunlight.

For more information, you can contact Towery at this email address: dan@agconservationsolutions.com

To read the whole article, click here. The article begins on page 17.

Satellite Imagery Helping Cover Crop Productivity

GPS and satellite technology have given agriculture a big gift, one that keeps on giving. With precision farming, growers now plant and fertilize based on field data and guidance systems calibrated to deliver the right input to the right locations. Productivity increases faster than costs, or at least that’s the goal.

Even a decade ago, there were only so many satellites and they were expensive to access the data for personal use. But now, nanosatellites scarcely bigger than a lunch pail provide far greater coverage at a fraction of the cost. Their low orbits and high resolution cameras give accurate, full time coverage. More importantly, the type of data available allows for greater application of data synthesized from aerial and ground sources.

Remote sensing is able to detect variability in soil and crop conditions.High-resolution, “multi-spectral” photos help understand what’s going on in the fields, and help reduce crop inputs. Pest and weed control are easier and less expensive. Imagery and field data help growers schedule harvest to maximize yields.

The latest in a new array of these tools is a collaborative effort called OpTIS (Operational Tillage Information System). Combining satellite and various on-the-ground data gathering methods, growers can now access information that allows field-specific tracking of crop residue management, types of tillage and cover crop use and value.

OpTIS uses multi-spectral satellite imagery to measure wintertime vegetation on agricultural fields and combines this information with site-specific knowledge of crop rotations and cover crop management practices. Images taken throughout the year are converted to show estimated cover crop coverage, the amount of cover crop residue, the type or classification of tillage practice, monitoring seasonal changes in cover crop residue and compiling all this with data from the field, the watershed and the wider county level.

According to a presentation by Applied GeoSolutions, LLC, about the OpTIS system, “Proximal sensors and on-farm sampling are used to calibrate imagery interpretation, and hyper-spectral, biophysical models are used to understand the impact of various components of ground cover (vegetation, soils, crop residue, and shadow) on field reflectance. Using these methods, USGS researchers can map cover crop performance at the watershed scale and improve the understanding of conservation outcomes associated with various cover crop management strategies. This information is used by farmers and conservation agencies to promote adaptive management of winter cover crop programs to maximize environmental benefits.”

In a pilot program last year, OpTIS was used in a small number of Indiana watersheds. Based on initial feedback, the program will broaden this season to more sites in that state as well as other sites in Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa, according to Dan Towery, whose work with the Indiana Soil Health Management project intersects with the OrTIS project.

Towery also said that the data available will help growers understand more about their varied soil types, help them gauge the impact of cover crops on building organic matter in the soil, and even better understand how to adjust management practices more accurately based on annual precipitation.

Ryegrass Cover Crop

A Cover Crop that Builds Soil and Boosts Production