Tag Archives: Sustainable agriculture

Annual Ryegrass – the Germ Seed of Cover Crop Adoption in the US – Part 2

Note: this is the first in a series of blog posts summarizing the growth of sustainable agriculture in the U.S. Specifically, this series will look at the role of cover crops and how  Oregon seed growers played a crucial role in introducing cover crops to Midwest farms.

“Ah-Ha” is Shorthand for Innovation

Don Wirth is accustomed to “ah-ha moments” in his life. So, the Oregon grass seed farmer and co-owner of Saddle Butte Ag Inc. wasn’t surprised when the lightbulb went on in his head at the annual Farm Machinery Show in the mid 1990s. He was there representing Oregon grass seed growers, specifically those who grow tall fescue.

“Three farmers from Ohio approached me and asked me what I knew about annual ryegrass. I knew enough to ask them what they knew first,” Don laughed. “Well, they told me they had been rotating annual ryegrass into their corn acreage and using it for grazing and sileage, and that they were getting up to seven tons of ryegrass silage sileage per acre with it.” None of that surprised him, although plenty of questions popped up for him, like what time of year they planted and how they got rid of the ryegrass before planting corn again.  They said they drill the ryegrass into corn stubble and then no till corn into the ryegrass stubble.

When the guys claimed that their corn production had improved in the acres planted with annual ryegrass, Don’s “ah-ha” was the stimulus for what has been a quarter-century of growth in cover cropping and “sustainable agriculture”.

He came back to Oregon that February and shared his news with Nick Bowers, co-owner of another Willamette Valley seed farm and Bryan Ostlund about putting some plots on dairy farms in the Midwest.   The Commission funded the project and plots were established the next year.

At the time, annual ryegrass was a high-volume, low-priced seed used primarily in warmer climates, sprayed liberally on ball fields, parks and highway rights-of-way. The idea that this lowly species might find a niche market, at a higher price, in the corn belt was attractive. At that time, in the mid-1990s, a few innovators had already been expressing delight with the benefits of no-tilling. But cover cropping was almost unheard of.

Fast forward for a moment to 2020. No-tilling and cover crops are household terms in farm country. The reduction of what was called “conventional” tillage is stunning, as farmers adopt management practices that rebuild the soil instead of continually ripping it up every year and seeing much of it wash or blow away during the year’s weather cycles.

The acres committed to no-tilling has risen from about 3 million acres in the mid-1970s (the era that ushered in Earth Day, and the far-reaching Clean Air and Clean Water legislation) to more than 100 million acres. The growth chart suggests that the practice is continuing to climb steeply, as more growers come to understand the benefits, and the savings, available with new management practices.

When Don, Nick and the Commission jumped into promoting annual ryegrass and cover crops, it’s safe to say there were only a handful of highly innovative farms testing cover crops with no-till, which basically amounts to planting a cover crop in the field after corn has been harvested.

Today, the number of acres planted in cover crops is somewhere between 15 and 16 million acres. But, like no-tilling, the rate of adoption is remarkable. For example, in just five years (2012 – 2017) the number of cover crop acres increased by almost 50 percent! And the number of farms using cover crops also increased by 15 percent in that same time.

In the Annual Report 2019 – 2020 Cover Crop Survey published by SARE and the Conservation Tillage Information Center (CTIC), the following paragraph describes what has become an “ah ha” for the agriculture industry.

Growers clearly appreciate the contributions they attribute to cover crops: healthier soils, lower herbicide and fertilizer costs, reduced erosion, and improved weed control. In fact, they appreciate the benefits enough to invest substantially in cover crop seed, and about one in three cover crop users pays for application as well. More than half of the horticulture respondents reported that cover crops increased their profitability.

In the next blog post, you’ll learn more about how the Oregon growers became instrumental in the Midwest adoption of cover crops, through a combination of inspiration, perspiration and innovation and cooperation with Midwest growers, universities and nonprofits.

In the meantime, make note of this FREE educational opportunity, the Fall 2020 national Cover Crop Summit (nov 17 – 18). One of the sponsors is KB Seed Solutions, co-owned by Nick Bowers, one of the Oregon cover crop innovators you’ll learn more about in the next chapter.

Annual Ryegrass – A Quarter Century of Cover Crop Growth

Mike Plumer was still alive when the cover crop experiment began in the Midwest. An innovator from the get-go, Mike was doing his own farming while also on the faculty of the U. of Illinois, researching and helping area farmers become more successful.

In the mid 1990s, Plumer and Ralph “Junior” Upton got together and the revolution got a new boost. Upton had already been experimenting with cover crops on his Springerton, Illinois acreage. The year Plumer and he first planted annual ryegrass made their eyes practically bug out. Here’s how Junior describes it, in a recent SARE article:

“Upton recalls introducing ryegrass into his system and seeing roots 48 inches deep, growing through the fragipan, even though above-ground biomass was less than five inches tall. Being vulnerable to droughts was an ongoing concern in the past, but now cover crops have helped to alleviate some of that worry by improving both the water-holding capacity of his soil and the rooting depth of his corn and soybeans. “Dry weather killed me in the past due to a fragipan,” Upton explains. “I had been farming the top five inches of soil, where now I use four feet of soil.”

Since then, the number of farms employing cover crops has increased dramatically, partly because of the educational work of Plumer and Upton. Until his death in 2017, Plumer was a tireless champion, and Upton continues his efforts that, he said, have been in the direction of conservation tillage since 1970.

In celebration of the quarter century of work that has gone into cover crop market development and usage, we’ll do some interviews with growers from Oregon who funded a lot of the research and development of winter hardy species of annual ryegrass and other cover crops. We’ll also interview some of the early adopters in the Midwest, and the innovators who came up with more efficient ways to plant cover crops and even how to interseed cover crops with standing corn.

While the adoption rate to cover crops has still been a drop in the bucket (a bit less than 10% of all farm acres in the Midwest are in cover crops), the rate of acceptance has continued to rise. At the current rate of new acres being planted, it’s estimated that we could double in the next 10 years what has been planted in cover crops in the past 25 years!

Transition to Cover Crops – Cornerstone to Sustainable Ag

Check out this video on YouTube – of Rich Clark, Field to Market’s Farmer of the Year in 2019. Rich is a fifth generation Indiana (Williamsport) farmer and his claim to fame is making conservation tillage and cover cropping into a full-time affair. The term for this type of ag – “regenerative”!

He began no-tilling and cover cropping only a decade ago, but said his first year with it (annual ryegrass) convinced him he was on the right track. He said after only one year doing a cover crop in corn, it produced the best average yield of his entire 7000 acre farm!

Since then, Rich has converted his entire acreage to cover crops. He’s gone all NON-GMO seed, which has given other farmers the incentive to try it too. Massive food companies like Dannon and Unilever contract with farmers like him to grow products sought by more and more people seeking food health and safety.

He said, “We have a diverse mix of crops and we have cattle. We are 100% non-GMO on all crops and we don’t use any starter fertilizer, fungicide, seed treatment or insecticide at all.”

One of his key practices is crop rotation, because it (and cover crops) contributes to a natural bonus of nitrogen into the soil. It also reduces weeds, interrupts the life cycle of pests and thus eliminates the need of pesticides. Here, from an article in the Sustainability Alliance website, Rick describes how he manages the rotation. “One-third of our farm is in a three-crop rotation – corn, soybeans and wheat. Another third is in a four-crop rotation – corn, soybeans, wheat and alfalfa for a nearby dairy. The remaining third is in transition to organic. We have just got approval for our first organic certified acres, which I’m very excited about.”

Among the outcomes of this switch to a Nature-oriented growing is that Rick says he spends LESS per acre than he used to…less on fertilizer and other chemicals, and less on equipment (he doesn’t need as much power so he sold off some of his more powerful tractors in favor of smaller ones, which saved him $35,000 in fuel in the past nine years!)

And the frosting on the cake…his choice to move to regenerative ag has him working with other customers who pay premium for non-GMO, locally raised crops and livestock,

The Impact and Opportunities of Crisis

The COVID-19 virus has kicked America’s economy in the gut. Even with a multi-TRILLION dollar infusion of cash in the next few months, it will be years before we’ll know whether it was enough, or whether it was invested in the proper sectors of society.

The impact on the Midwest is just beginning to be revealed. Will it further depress commodity prices and create a worker shortage? Will dairy and livestock processing grind to a halt because of a trucker shortage? Will deliveries of critical ag-related products slow to a crawl? Will the shrinking and shifting consumer spending pattern create more farm debt?

Dan Perkins, an organic farmer, small business owner and ag consultant from DeMotte, Indiana, is among those families who are already straining because of the pandemic. Perkins Good Earth Farm produces a variety of vegetables for about 150 families, selling direct through a local CSA (Community-supported agriculture.)

“This has had a huge impact on us already,” he said. “Local food sales are through the roof, and vegetable seed supply is really tight, because demand from small scale farmers and home gardeners have skyrocketed.”

“Normally, customers order online and come here to pick up their produce. But the new concerns for safety have pushed us to modify the way we package for pick up. Customers used to bring their own bags and shop farmer’s market style, where everything was displayed in bulk. Now we put everything in two-gallon bags and plastic containers. It’s increased our cost for labor, packaging, logistics and marketing. And at the same time my wife, Julie continues to do marketing and managing the CSA, while caring for our four children, home from school because of the closures.”

“We have four seasonal employees, too, and the social distancing protocols, on top of the added layers of product safety, have slowed all our activities down considerably,” he added. Because he has existing contracts with his customers, and is considerate of their potential hardships, he is not passing any of his new costs along to them.

The virus has also impacted some of his work as a Certified Crop Advisor. Naturally, Dan’s clients want him out in the fields on occasion to see up close what’s going on. And while he has tried to augment his on-farm visits with webinars and online video calls, he also said  “I think agriculture is among the ‘essential businesses’ we need to keep open and fully operating, so farm visits and field work are important.”

He also said that with industry non-essential travel having been restricted until early to mid summer, field day demonstrations have been cancelled or postponed. “This, too, will impact the information needed for good cover crop use in 2020,” he said.

With 20 years of exposure to the ups and downs of agriculture in the Midwest, Dan was upbeat about how times of crisis have always created opportunities for future health and growth in the industry. One of the things he discussed was the value – and the need – for more diversity on Midwest farms.

“I’m getting more and more local calls from farmers who want to add diversity to their farm,” he said. “Some in the last couple years tried growing hemp, and that was a bit of a disappointment. But others, and Cameron Mills (Walton, IN) is a good example, are integrating livestock into their row crops. He’s got a small herd and portable fencing, and he’s selling the cover crop-fed direct to local customers hungry for healthy, locally raised livestock.”

One of the potential challenges he discussed is how to move slowly in the direction of direct sales and away from strictly contract growing corn and soybeans. “It takes people with a desire, ability and a personality for selling direct to the public,” he said. “Many of the older farmers have never done that and don’t really want to start now. So, in some cases the next generation is taking on those responsibilities.”

Cover crops are an example of this new direction. While the science and economics of cover crops have proven out over the past 25 years, the number of acres in the Midwest with cover crops on them is probably not more than 15 percent. “By now, we should have more than 50 percent covered,” Dan said. “But it’s still a new thing for those who’ve been farming the same way for 50 years or more.”

Dan also said that the amount of information available about cover crops and crop diversification is immense, but that change comes principally via word-of-mouth – farmers talking with peers about their successes and failures with new ideas. “Technical support and financial incentives continue to be important, too,” he added, and unfortunately there’s not enough support and too much paperwork associated with it.”

Links to online resources regarding diversifying agriculture in the Midwest