Tag Archives: Dan Towery

Annual Ryegrass Video Series – for beginners and intermediate cover crop users

The experts said it back in 1998, that no-till and cover crops were a winning combination for corn and soybean growers. Ten years later, a series of videos were done to introduce the idea and bring basic understanding of the what and how of cover crops. Back in 2005, the idea that a cover crop could sink winter roots down to 50 inches or more was revolutionary in the ag industry. Today, the practice is becoming widespread in the Midwest. The videos stand up to the test of time, and continue to be a solid source of information.

In the first video segment, you can get a glimpse of the main characteristics of annual ryegrass, and a couple of its major benefits.

Root depth: “Better than a deep ripper, in terms of its ability to break up compaction,” said Dan Towery, of Ag Conservation Solutions, an Indiana consultant on soil health.”Far deeper than other cover crops,” said Mike Plumer a former university agronomist and pioneer in cover crop development in the Midwest.

Nitrogen scavenger: those who use livestock manure in the field benefit by having the nutrient stay in the field.
“Annual ryegrass is a great nitrogen scavenger,” said another cover crop pioneer in Indiana, Dan DeSutter, …keeping it in the field instead of sending it down the tile lines in the spring with runoff.”

If the videos are of some interest, perhaps you would also like more information about the science and the management of annual ryegrass. If so, click here for a free brochure. Or, click here for a library of information on the annual ryegrass website.

National No-Till Conference – 25th Anniversary – Features Lots of Cover Crop Ed.

This year’s annual National No-Till Conference – Jan 10 – 13 – in St. Louis is perhaps the best ever. Here’s the link to the website. Click on the image below to see the entire prgram listing.

For you cover crop fans, here’s a listing of the speakers, classes and roundtable discussions about cover crops. There are plenty available on each of the three days of the conference.

Wednesday

Speakers

Ray McCormick, Indiana, 2400 acre grower, all no-till w/cover crop
J.C. Cahill – U of Alberta…how plants talk to each other and how knowing that might be important for your farm.

Classes

Ray Weil, U of Maryland soil scientist

Improve crop access to water and nutrients
Keep more N on your farm – research on how cover crops help N mgmt.
Boost soil bio processes in deeper layers

Ray McCormick, Indiana, 2400 acres, all no-till with cover crops

Adapting equipment for use in seeding cover crops
How to do it inexpensively ($13/a).

Dan Towery and Hans Kok, Indiana/Illinois

Interseeding cover crops into corn
Adding wheat to your rotation
Planting 8 – 15 way cover crop cocktail after wheat…and how that could produce a double digit increase in corn and soybean yields while cutting your N application rates in half.

Egon Zunckel, South Africa

Mitigating poor water infiltration, erosion and stagnant yields with a variety of practices, including cover crops
Introduction of livestock to help manage large amounts of crop residue.

Seth Watkins, Iowa

Cover crops, prairie strips, buffers, native grasses, terracing, crop rotation and rotational livestock grazing – protecting soils while building organic matter quickly and boosting profits.

Jim Johnson, Noble Foundation soils consultant

Grazing cover crops – how to get started
Research results from a variety of states.

Ten No-Till Round-table discussions on Cover Crops, including:

From the North Plains states, to NE and Mid Atlantic
Great Lakes and Ontario
Southern and High Plains
Midwest states: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri.

Mike Plumer – Making Sense of Cover Crop Mixes

When does one cover crop – or two or three – make more sense than a cocktail of mixes?
How to balance cost with needs?
Determine what soils need before making decisions about seed.

Thursday

Joe Breker, ND grower (spoke at inaugural No-Till Conference in 1993)

Cover crops in northern climates
Slash input costs with improved organic matter, banding fertilizer and cover crops.

Mike Plumer – Tips for Terminating cover Crops more effectively

How to do it effectively and save yourself headaches?
How weather, seed varieties, growth states and herbicide choices factor in?
Why to avoid the Variety Not Stated (VNS) label?

Alan Mindermann, Oklahoma

Use cover crops to help mitigate the effects of unpredictable weather and limited moisture
How to track moisture and herbicide applications while making rotation decisions?

Robert Kremer, Ag Research Center, MO

Impact of cover crops on suppressing weeds and weed seed banks.

Roundtable discussions

Making the Right moves with Cover Crop mixes
Seeing the Potential in Cereal Rye Seeding
Getting out of the Starting Gate with Annual Ryegrass
Turning Up No-Till Diversity with Radishes

Friday

Round-table discussions

Tips, Tools for Timely Cover Crop Seeding
Cover Crops that Cut Your Fertilizer Bill.

Randy McElroy, Sustainability researcher at Monsanto Co.

Transform soil with a variety of tools, including cover crops.

New Midwest Incentives for Cover Crops

Among other things, Dan Towery manages the Indiana part of the Soil Health Partnership, a network of innovative farmers in eight Midwest states. Dan has been a consultant for the Oregon Grass Seed Growers Commission that promotes use of annual ryegrass as a cover crop for more than a decade. He has been a steady voice for conservation agriculture since he graduated from Western Illinois University.

Dan was a staff agronomist for the Conservation Technology Information Center and was state agronomist in Indiana before joining the staff of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). In recent years, Dan’s been tireless making connections – both one on one with Midwest growers – as well as nationally and in other countries, with leaders of industry, policy and conservation. That work created a natural space for him on the board of the International Soil & Water Conservation Society board for 6 years. He was selected as its president in 2012 and 2013.

This past growing season, the Soil Health Partnership conducted more than 40 field days in eight states, attended by more than 1500 farmers, eager to learn from each other the details of managing cover crops. The field days covered subjects like cover crops and other soil improvement methods, as well as equipment, nutrient management and other topics. The initiative, sponsored by the National Corn Growers Association has also gained tremendous support of a dazzling variety of groups including Monsanto, NRCS, the United Soybean Board, the Walton Family Foundation, the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Nature Conservancy.

In September, largely because of its effective promotion of conservation tillage in the Midwest, the Soil Health Partnership learned that it won a $1 million Conservation Innovation Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The grant funding will help to quantify the gains being made by farmers using cover crops and other conservation strategies, according to a news release from the organization.

Farmers enrolled in the SHP program will be invited to participate in the carbon reduction incentive system, in which growers are paid by corporations to sequester carbon in their soil, according to the article.

“This is a great opportunity for farmers to continue being a part of the solution to carbon sequestration, and gain financial incentives for carbon-smart ag practices like growing cover crops and using minimum tillage,” said Nick Goeser, NCGA director of soil health and sustainability and director of the SHP. “We hope to provide businesses with a quantifiable method to reduce their carbon footprint by increasing these on-the-ground conservation practices.”

Soil Health Partnership Grows From a Desire to Thrive – Biologically and Economically!

The National Corngrowers Association started the Midwest Soil Health Partnership three years ago. Here’s what they say about the novel effort, supported at the beginning by Monsanto, The Walton Family Foundation and with technical support from The Nature Conservancy. Among its staff is Dan Towery, an agronomist from Indiana, who has been working with cover crops for decades and has been a consultant to the Oregon Ryegrass Cover Crop project for more than a decade.

This spring, the organization begins in its third year identifying, testing and measuring farm management practices that improve soil health. These include growing cover crops, practicing conservation tillage like no-till or strip-till, and using sophisticated nutrient management techniques.

The program’s goal is to quantify the benefits of these practices from an economic standpoint, showing farmers how healthy soil benefits their bottom line. They also have positive environmental benefits, like protecting water from nutrient runoff.

Twenty-five more farms have joined the research effort, which could change the way the whole farming industry views agricultural best practices. The number of participating farms expands to 65 this year, located in eight Midwestern states. Data from farms will play a key role in widespread changes for improving soil health, said Towery, the Indiana field manager with partner Hans Kok, PhD.

From the Soil Health Partnership website, here is a goal statement:

Our ultimate goal is to measure and communicate the economic and environmental benefits of different soil management strategies, and provide a set of regionally specific, data‑driven recommendations that farmers can use to improve the productivity and sustainability of their farms. To that end, we plan to do the following:

Recruit a network of demonstration farms
that will serve as showcases for other farmers to investigate innovative soil management practices, including reduced tillage systems, cover crops and advanced nutrient management.
Establish research protocols that will allow us to measure the connection between a diverse range of soil management practices and soil health.
Publish findings and recommendations
that highlight the economic and environmental benefits of healthy soil.
Support networking and technical assistance
that will help growers and their advisors make decisions that will result in positive changes for the profitability of their operation and the sustainability of the soil.

Illinois Makes Strides in Conservation Tillage and Cover Crops

The American Farmland Trust says this about the Midwest’s heritage in agriculture:

With flat prairies, plentiful water, and rich, deep soils, the Midwest is one of the most intensely farmed regions in the world. We depend on it for many of our grocery staples – from corn and soybeans to wheat and meat.

But the Midwest’s abundance of fertile farmland has sometimes led us to take it for granted. We’re rapidly paving over some of the most productive soils and farmland in the world.

At the same time, tons of prime topsoil washes away – and we can’t afford to lose it. In the Midwest, we need to save the land – not just by the acre but also by the inch.

Illinois, 2nd in the nation in production of corn and soybeans, has been somewhat late to the table on soil conservation methods. Cover crop pioneer Mike Plumer worked for decades for Illinois’ major ag university as an Extension educator and agronomist. Despite his untiring advocacy for no-till and cover crops, his university seemed indifferent and even adversarial to his claim that conservation practices were the future of agriculture. Adverse to change, some believe that quality soil will continue without fail, and what dips in productivity one experiences, you can augment with chemistry.

Another Midwest pioneer in cover crop practices, Dan Towery, hails from Indiana, but his work has taken him far afield, and also in close-by partnership with Plumer. His current involvement in a NRCS and SERE project in Illinois, however, spells good news for the day when Illinois will hit its stride with its neighbors, advocating soil conservation, better soil management and improved water quality..

A sign of things on the move in Illinois is the information available from the NRCS office. CLICK here for a look.

And, through NRCS and EQIP, funding is available this year for Illinois growers interested in doing more to save the quality of their soil through conservation measures, like cover crops. CLICK here for an application, courtesy of the Illinois Council on Best Management Practices.

Beating Compaction with Annual Ryegrass

An article this week in No-Till Farmer, about a well-attended seminar at the recent National No-Till Conference. Click here for the whole article.

Beating Compaction

While radishes get a reputation for being a compaction buster, Hans Kok and Dan Towery say annual ryegrass is probably the No. 1 cover crop for resolving compaction.

Kok, coordinator of the Indiana Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative, says annual ryegrass does a better job in the long run of breaking up compaction layers because its fine root system is able to cover a larger area.

“Radishes have that fine root network too, but it’s usually that one tuber that goes through,” he explains.

On compacted glacial-till soil in Indiana, Towery, a no-till consultant with Ag Conservation Solutions in Lafayette, Ind., dug a hole in April where there was 9-inch-tall annual ryegrass. He found its roots went 51 inches deep.

One of the most extreme cases of compaction they saw was in southern Illinois on hard, fragipan soils. Kok says the growers there had 18 inches of topsoil, and their corn and soybean roots couldn’t go any deeper.

But 5 years of annual ryegrass started to break through that compaction layer, and now the growers have 3 feet of topsoil for their corn and soybeans, Kok says.

Dan Towery to Present on Cover Crop Limitations

The 24th Annual National No-Till Conference will take place Jan 6 – 9, 2016 at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Indianapolis. Dan Towery and a close working colleague, Hans Kok, will present on Jan 7th. here’s a description of that classroom event at the show.

“Possibilities and Limitations of Cover Crops: Fixing Tough Conditions.” With the rising popularity of cover crops, no-tillers are finding they may be able to fix many problems in the soil, such as resolving compaction, reducing diseases like pythium by improving the soil’s aggregate stability and controlling certain glyphosate-resistant weeds.

But there are limits to what they can fix and how long it may take, as well as growing conditions, to see results. Hans Kok, coordinator of the Indiana Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative, and Dan Towery, no-till consultant with Ag Conservation Solutions in Lafayette, Ind., will discuss both the possibilities and limitations of cover crops. – See more at: http://www.no-tillfarmer.com/articles/5152?page=2#sthash.68EvKpZY.dpuf

Video – Innovations with Cover Crop Seeding – Jamie Scott

Indiana cover crop pioneer and innovator Jamie Scott presented an informative overview of cover crop seeding options in 2014. Click here to access the video.

Successful Tips for Cover Crops

In a recent article on Ag.com by Edith Munro, Dan Towery offered these tips for cover crop success.

Cover crop decisions can be initially overwhelming. “Details – especially timing – are critical,” says Dan Towery, president of Ag Conservation Solutions and Soil and Water Conservation Society.

Here are five questions and tips Towery gives to guide you if you are considering a cover crop.

1. What do you want to accomplish with a cover crop?
Cover crops offer a range of possible benefits that include:
• Reducing erosion.
• Reducing soil compaction.
• Scavenging nitrogen.
• Fixing nitrogen.
• Increasing organic matter.
• Improving weed control.
• Increasing water infiltration.
• Improving soil biological activity.
• Matching goals with cover crop selection is essential.

Selecting a maximum of three is the first step to narrowing the list of cover
crops to consider.

2. How will you plant it and when?
Planting method and timing are key interrelated decisions. Traditionally, the best seed-to-soil contact comes from drilling, but that must occur after harvest. In the Upper Midwest, seeding that late limits the cover crop options.

3. What will follow the cover crop in your rotation?
Since some cover crops tie up nitrogen, it is especially important to consider the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio of the covers being considered if the following crop will be corn.

4. Which cover crop will you plant?
Multiple options are available depending on location. Consider using the Midwest Cover Crop Council’s Cover Crop Decision Tool.

The tool provides customized guidance for Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Ontario, and Wisconsin. It allows you to plug location, cash crop, planting and harvest dates, and cover crop objectives to narrow the list of cover crop choices that match your specific conditions.

Two books offer more detailed information:

Managing Cover Crops Profitably (Third Edition), published by the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program (sare.org)
Cover Crops Field Guide, from the Midwest Cover Crops Council.

5. How will you terminate your cover crop?
Towery recommends planning early and killing the tougher cover crops early. Some cover crops will winterkill on their own, and some may be easy to kill. Others may require following fairly specific instructions to terminate.

Once you have completed your initial research and have decided on a potential list of cover crops, Towery recommends planting a small trial plot to become familiar with various cover crop traits.

“It can be as small as 10×10 feet. Look for opportunities where you can watch how your cover crops do through a fall-winter-spring cycle,” he suggests. “A sweet corn patch is good, or if you have a small wheat or corn silage field.”

Success with cover crops requires a systems approach, Towery says. “The reason some growers can make cover crops work but their neighbors can’t isn’t complex. It’s all about attention to details and timing.

“Doing the homework minimizes unpleasant surprises. You must complete all the steps for success,” he says.

Soil Health Partnership Promotes Cover Crops

The Soil Health Partnership is into its second full year, developing a network of farms in the Midwest that continue to innovate management practices. The Partnership is a combination of effort funded by Monsanto and the Walton Foundation and organized through the National Corn Growers Association. Click here for their website.

The aim is to lessen drainage of field nutrients into waterways leading eventually to the Gulf of Mexico. The strategies include nutrient management and cover crops, including annual ryegrass. The research on these 100 plus farms will continue to expand, and participating growers are starting with small acreage – 20 to 80 acres. “Cover crops are critical,” said Dan Towery, who is a consultant to the project. He said that threats of legal action by some Iowa counties against farmers allowing excessive nitrates leach into waterways is creating added urgency.