The Winter 2015 edition of Oregon Seed magazine discusses the trend in cover crop seed sales in the Midwest. The quote is from Dan Towery, an independent cover crop consultant and longtime conservation tillage educator.
For his part, Mike Plumer said that the 2014 dip doesn’t mean a decline in cover crop seed sales or the expansion of the practice of cover cropping. Plumer is another pioneer cover crop researcher and educator, formerly with the University of Indiana Extension Service.
Cover cropping continues to grow in popularity and in acreage simply because it builds soil quality, improves yields and adds to profits.
That mother nature doesn’t always cooperate hasn’t diminished the appetite for producers seeking to get on the most popular new farming trend in a half century.
In a presentation a couple years ago, cover crop pioneer Mike Plumer, showed the reasons why cover crops are increasingly important as a farm management tool, particularly in the Midwest. Mono-culture crops have starved the soil of nutrients while sending immense quantities of soil into nearby waterways, eventually contributing to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the Earth’s largest known dead zones due to heavy pollution from farm runoff into the Mississippi river.
Beginning in 1995, the Oregon Ryegrass Commission, working with Plumer and a handfull of farmers, began to experiment with annual ryegrass in barren cornfields over winter. Since then, Oregon growers have created more winter hardy annual ryegrass grass varieties, as well as finding other cover crops, like radish and crimson clover.
Though the percentage of farm acreage in the Midwest committed to cover crops is still below 10 percent, it’s impressive that cover crops now cover millions of acres of corn and soybean acres, building soil quality, preventing erosion and improving production yields.
This past fall, seed dealers and distributors were ready. But the wet conditions and late harvest prevented some from getting the fields planted, according to Dan Towery, another cover crop consultant and colleague of Plumer.
For those times, farmers are increasingly going to new methods of planting cover crops: flown onto standing crops late in the season, for example, or broadcast with modified high-clearance sprayers equipped with seeders. Still others are trying a novel approach called interseeding, where annual ryegrass is planted in the SPRINGTIME, rather than the fall. Click here to find out more about that program.
Adaptive management. Fancy title, basically meaning “be on top of developing situations in your fields and be ready for a Plan B”.
Many farmers already fit that definition to a TEE. When it comes to growing successful cover crops, however, many have had to up their game.
Cameron Mills, for example, was ready to seed his annual ryegrass cover crop seed in the fall, with a high-clearance sprayer adapted to plant cover crops. The late harvest, complicated by a wet fall, foiled his Plan A. His Plan B was a phone call to a nearby pilot to fly on the annual ryegrass seed.
Mills farms in Walton, IN, and has been a consistent cover cropper since 2005. His experience has put him on the front edge of cover crop field research. For example, he has studied the impact of annual ryegrass on extra nitrogen in the field. Accordingly, he’s reduced his input of N by 30 lb/ac and it hasn’t impacted yield. The following is from an article in Western Farmer Stockman
“In 2012, Mills layered in 170 lbs. of N per acre. Thanks in large part to his healthy no-till/cover-crop soil, he harvested a 165 bushel corn crop despite the severe drought.”
He said he believes he can trim that further, and Dan Towery agrees. Towery, an independent cover crop advisor and immediate past president of SWCS, said (in the same article) that, “after five years of continuous use of cover crops, farmers can typically cut N rates by an average of 50 lbs per acre for the crop year.” The savings will easily cover the cost of cover crop planting, he added.
The experience of others certainly helps those newer to cover cropping, and then having your own experience with cover crops will build confidence towards having your own Adaptive Management Strategy.
As Towery advises with adaptive management, “go slow and pay attention.”
Russia has moved into mega farming of livestock, and a lot of American advisers have helped them along the way. Here’s an article segment from Beef magazine, from its June 2014 issue. The article introduces readers to Miratorg, a “vertically integrated” company owned by two shareholders (experienced ranchers) with mind-boggling expansion plans, aided by a hungry government.
In the aerial photo, below, one of 30 pasture/feed lots owned by Miratorg, this one hosting a population of up to 49,000 head. Miratorg’s slaughter plant is located about a mile away.
“Miratorg is the leading investor in the Russian agribusiness industry. It’s the largest meat producer and supplier in the Russian market, thanks to its high-performing vertically integrated agribusiness holding that took a leading position in production, processing, logistic supplies and sales of agricultural products.
In a recent inquiry from Mark Dodd, a Purdue trained agronomist/consultant working for Miratorg, he wanted to know about cover crops. Here’s a part of his description of the farm operation at Bryansk…at about the same latitude in Russia as North Dakota.
“I am an agronomist here in Russia, the largest ag project in the world. over 200,000 angus cows with calves, and not enough pastures, not enough forages, 1 million acres of crops, and I am trying to do everything possible to find different solutions to this problem. Interseeding [of cover crops], double crop after triticale or wheat harvest (July 10), [with the] first frost on about 0ct. 15. Sandy based soils, poor pH,(but applying lime finally) usually good rainfall, had drought this year. Miratorg has its own slaughter plants, and over 500 grocery stores, largest employer in Russia, over 30,000 people.. People are still very poor and some are starving here. I need some help with advice.”
Dan Towery, a well regarded US agronomist and cover crop consultant for the Oregon Ryegrass Commission, has contacted Mark…and begun to tell him about the cover crop successes in the US and Canada, with annual ryegrass and others. We’ll let you know more about those discussions soon.
Interseeding Cover Crops in the Northern US
In recent years, growers and agronomists in Canadian Province of Quebec have been creating a “game changer” in agriculture, with the addition of cover crops, according to Dan Towery. In northern latitudes, with shorter growing seasons, cover crops haven’t been practical because of the small window of growing time after harvest in which cover crops could establish before winter.
By planting annual ryegrass into knee-high corn in the late spring, however, cover crops can now get established before the corn’s growth shades the cover crop. The ryegrass lies near dormant all summer, thus not competing for moisture. After harvest, the cover crop then resumes growth until cold weather and snow send it back into dormancy. Then, in the spring, the annual ryegrass is killed before the field is again planted in corn or beans.
The results are touted in an article published in Corn Guide earlier this year.
This spring, Towery is working with a number of growers in a variety of locations in the upper Midwest to see if the same technique will work. Planting a couple of acres at each location will yield some important data – about whether the annual ryegrass can survive throughout the summer in the upper Midwest, where temperatures are hotter and often with less rainfall than in southern Canada. Crop yield differences will also be noted, to see if ryegrass pulls too much moisture from the soil and thus reduces corn yield.
Looking at Crimson Clover in Cover Crop Mix with Annual Ryegrass
Crimson clover’s peak potential to fix Nitrogen is just before it blooms. It can fix the most nitrogen (up to 135b/ac) in the soil at that time. But in a normal weather year, Central Midwest growers would terminate the crimson clover in mid April, ahead of planting corn. This is well before bloom, thus limiting the amount of N actually produced.
This spring, being so late, Indiana grower Mike Starkey decided to leave the cover crop on his field a month longer than normal. The cover crop mix was crimson clover, annual ryegrass, Austrian winter pea and dicon radish. As you can see in the photos below (5/19/14), the clover is in full bloom. Purdue University students were there taking samples on the 80 acre parcel to determine the N content.
While many in the Midwest experienced a tough cover crop year because of the harsh winter, this parcel fared well due to the tree line which acted as a windbreak. A minus 20 to minus 30 degree windchill with no snow cover seems to be the threshold at which winterkill occurs. Many areas had significant snow but the wind blew the snow off of some areas.
At every trade show and field day, we hear the story (thankfully, fewer times each year) about how “hard it is to kill annual ryegrass.” Invariably, when you ask a couple of specific questions, the problem becomes very clear. “In some things about agriculture, you can cut corners and not cause too many problems,” said Dan Towery. “With annual ryegrass, you’re asking for trouble if you deviate from a strict management protocol.”
So, the first question Dan asks people who have trouble with annual ryegrass management:
Ammonium sulfate is a surfactant, whose purpose is to improve retention on the leaf surface and increase movement of the herbicide from the leaf surface into the leaf. AMS also softens “hard” water, helping to nullify the impact of naturally-occurring magnesium and calcium.
WIthout AMS, the minerals in water will compromise the effectiveness of glyphosate.Adding AMS helps the translocation of glyphosate to the annual ryegrass.
Proper translocation of glyphosate into the plant tissue depends on the air temperature, the weather and what time of day you apply it. For more specific information on this particular aspect, click here to take you to the annual ryegrass website.
In February, in Omaha, a cover crop symposium is attracting cover crop innovators, big seed dealers, seed growers and equipment company reps to discuss how to quickly grow the cover crop usage.
Cover crops are now planted on approximately 2 million acres in the Midwest. One of the symposium’s central topic is how to turn that number into 20 million acres in the next couple of decades, or sooner.
The daylong symposium will be telecast live to 200 sites around the US, in hopes that a much larger audience can access the information.
On Feb. 6, Dan Towery will present on soil health and cover crops to the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association in Brodhagen, west of Toronto.
In March, Dan and Hans Kok will present a 2 hour webinar sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency. Their presentation is on how cover crops can impact water quality…largely by keeping soil and nutrients in the fields, less susceptible to erosion. Soil biology can influence yields, Towery said, and cover crops are a key contributor.
Quebec, Canada. Who’d have thought about planting cover crops there?
Daniel Briere, an agronomist with Plant Production Quebec, works with local farmers on a novel way to plant annual ryegrass – late in the spring, about six weeks after corn has emerged and reached knee height. Using modified high clearance equipment, the annual ryegrass sprouts in spring weather and then goes dormant in summertime, when the grass is shaded by corn.
After corn is harvested, the annual ryegrass is already very well established, able to grow until freezing weather, when cold and snow send the crop into dormancy again. Saddlebutte Ag, an Oregon seed grower, has provided the hearty annual ryegrass seed for the past four or five years, as the project has grown. Dan Towery, Midwest adviser on cover crops and President of the Soil & Water Conservation Society, has followed the project the past few years and said: “It could be a game changer for cover crop planting. I’m impressed. But I have to say, if you’re new to planting cover crops, wait on trying this…or try it on a small plot. It’s unclear how spring seeding of annual ryegrass will play out in the Midwest.
In 2005 there were not many cover crops being planted in the Midwest. Although annual ryegrass had very positive results, management was seen as somewhat complex and there was limited adoption.
Here it is, almost 9 years later, and the cover crop phenomenon continues to impress us all. It’s hard to calculate exactly, but crop consultant and cover crop advocate Dan Towery estimated that upwards of 2 million acres of cover crops were planted last year in the Midwest.
But here’s the astonishing thing. Key players in cover crop development will meet in Omaha in February, 2014. It’s by invite only. And among the agenda items, according to Towery, is to strategize how to increase the acreage in Midwest cover crops by TEN FOLD in the next decade – to 20,000.000 acres! That sounds like a lot until you understand that there over 170 million acres of corn and soybean acreage in the Midwest, according to the Dept. of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the Univ. of Illinois Urbana – Champaign.
One of Towery’s concerns: even to get to the 20 million acre mark, it may be a challenge to find the seed to plant those acres. Seed farmers in Oregon have increased their acres to match demand of annual ryegrass and other cover crops. But are there enough acres to produce seed for a 10 fold increase? Stay tuned.