Category Archives: General Information

New Annual Ryegrass Management Guide for 2016

ARG in Quebec - November photoClick here for the new “Quick Guide” for managing Annual Ryegrass as a cover crop.

In addition to new tips for seeding, the guide also outlines an emerging problem for managing cover crops in the Midwest. Many farmers use residual herbicides in the field to control weeds like marestail and waterhemp.

The lifespan of some of these herbicides extends into the next growing season for cover crops and have been shown to have a “carryover” effect on the success of the cover crop.

In the next post, we’ll outline more details on the types of herbicides to watch out for and how to continue using cover crops, too.

Herbicide Carryover in Cover Crops – New Free Guides

In the past couple of years, there has been increasing concern about the impact of residual herbicides in the field hampering or killing cover crops, including annual ryegrass.

Mike Plumer, a pioneer in the cover crop renaissance in the Midwest, has published a handy guide to specific residual herbicides and his observation about their affect on different cover crops.

Click here for a selection of publications about the herbicide carryover issue..

Cover Crops and Carbon Sequestration

The recent Climate conference in Paris included talk about cover crops and carbon sequestration. With a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, scientists are looking at ways to improve the soil’s capacity to regain some of what it has lost to cultivation and oxidation. Here’s a section of an article from an agronomist at Yale University, speaking about work that Ohio State’s Rattan Lal has done.

According to Rattan Lal, director of Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, the world’s cultivated soils have lost between 50 and 70 percent of their original carbon stock, much of which has oxidized upon exposure to air to become CO2. Now, armed with rapidly expanding knowledge about carbon sequestration in soils, researchers are studying how land restoration programs in places like the former North American prairie, the North China Plain, and even the parched interior of Australia might help put carbon back into the soil. 

Dan Towery said that cover crops have lots of promise, bringing carbon back into and storing it in the soil. But, he added that no-till and cover cropping are still new, and gains by one farmer who steadfastly improves the carbon base can quickly be lost again. “All it takes is one tillage trip to lose about 90 percent of what you’ve gained in a decade of cover crops and no-till,” he said. The carbon, even after a decade, isn’t much deeper than two inches. And, there’s no guarantee that, with the sale or rental of that farm, successive farmers will continue to abide with that practice.

So, the idea of paying people to sequester carbon will have to wait some time, he said, until the management practices have settled firmly on the side of conservation tillage.

 

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

Annual Ryegrass Seed Dealer List for 2016

Growth in sales have continue to match growth of acreage of annual ryegrass as a cover crop.

Will we reach 20 million acres in Midwest cover crops acres by 2020? At present rate of growth, perhaps not. But farmers understand how annual ryegrass and other cover crops increase soil health, while also fattening their profitability.

Click here for a list of annual ryegrass seed for your cover crop.  

NRCS Funds Expanded Use of Cover Crops

From No-Till Magazine’s managing editor this week, an article about expanded use of federal taxpayer funds for establishing agricultural conservation measures. Click here for the whole article. Below, a portion of that article.

It’s becoming ever more clear that the NRCS believes no-tilling, cover crops and more precise grazing methods will be crucial to shoring up the declining Ogallala aquifer.

And it’s also clear farmers in the southern Plains will continue to feel pressure to reduce or eliminate their dependence on irrigation, or adopt more efficient technology.

The NRCS announced this month that it will invest $8 million in the ongoing Ogallala Aquifer Initiative (OEI) in 2016 to help farmers and ranchers conserve water in the Ogallala’s footprint. This is up from $6.5 million that was spent for 2015.

The NRCS is also adding two new management areas for the OEI:

  • Middle Republican Natural Resource District: The project in southwestern Nebraska addresses groundwater quantity and quality concerns, and will enable participants to voluntarily implement practices to conserve irrigation water and improve groundwater quality.
  • Oklahoma Ogallala Aquifer Initiative: Among other things, this project will help landowners implement conservation practices — including crop residue and tillage management — that decrease water use. One goal is helping farmers convert from irrigated to dryland farming.

The NRCS already has focus areas in Nebraska, New Mexico, Texas, Kansas and Colorado, which you can read more about by clicking here.

The NRCS says it’s continuing to address problems with the aquifer by working with farmers to build soil health through seeding cover crops and implementing no-till practices, which will improve water-holding capacity and buffer roots from higher temperatures.

EPA Steps on Intro of Dow’s Enlist Duo

Combining glyphosate with other herbicides to increase the killing effect of the application has been used for many years. See our brochure on annual ryegrass management for specifics on this.

Earlier in the year, EPA allowed 15 states the green light to using Enlist Duo, a combination of glyphosate with a form of 2,4-D. But last week, the EPA filed suit to halt the distribution and sale of Enlist Duo, saying new information provided about the product by Dow “that suggests (the) two active ingredients could result in greater toxicity to non-target plants.”

EPA plans further review while Dow seeks to find a way to get clearance for the product for the 2016 season, including suggesting it might be able to modify the formulation somewhat or stipulate use conditions for the product.

Mississippi State U expands forage species testing; New companions to old favorites like Annual Ryegrass

Until 2007, the forage testing program at Mississippi State University was limited to annual ryegrass. Nothing wrong with that particularly but producers continued to urge research agronomists to look at other species and varieties.

Then Rocky Lemus was hired and since then, the program has blossomed.”MSU has the only complete forage testing plots in the United States,” Lemus said. “We have 20 different species, 110 varieties and four different locations.”

Read the whole article by clicking here.

Rocky Lemus, associate professor of forage systems with the Mississippi State University Extension Service and the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, leads the MSU official forage variety trials with plots containing 20 different species and 110 varieties at four locations across the state. (Photo by MSU Extension/Kat Lawrence)

Above – Rocky Lemus, associate professor of forage systems with the Mississippi State University Extension Service and the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, leads the MSU official forage variety trials with plots containing 20 different species and 110 varieties at four locations across the state. (Photo by MSU Extension/Kat Lawrence)

Four different locations are used for test plots; both warm and cool season species are tested. And from the basic annual ryegrass, the mix of new options for livestock forage has expanded geometrically.

“Warm-season perennial grasses include bermudagrass and bahiagrass. Sorghum-sudangrass hybrids and pearl millets are summer annual grasses. Annual ryegrass and small grains (oats, wheat and cereal rye) are common winter annual grasses. Perennial cool-season tall fescue is grown extensively in the Prairie sections and in north Mississippi. Perennial legumes include sericea lespedeza.”

And legumes are also being tested, Lemus said. Annual lespedeza and alyce clover are warm-season annual legumes while alfalfa, white clovers and red clovers are perennial cool-season legumes. A large number of cool-season annual legumes include crimson, ball, berseem and arrowleaf clovers. Vetch and wild winter peas also are cool-season annual legumes.

Farmers increasing cover-crop use

The annual report from the CTIC (Conservation Technology Info Center) published recently is more good news for the soil, the planet and the farmers who employ the cover crop technique. (Click here for the full report, including graphs). The news was reported by www.Agriview.com.

Here’s a paragraph outlining the gains being seen in the Midwest.

“Cover crops are growing in popularity by leaps and bounds among farmers. A recent survey of more than 1,200 growers throughout the United States showed cover crops boosted corn yields in 2014 by an average of 3.66 bushels per acre, or 2.1 percent, and soybean yields by 2.19 bushels or 4.2 percent. Last year was the third-consecutive year that yield boosts from cover crops were recorded by the Conservation Technology Information Center, a public-private partnership in West Lafayette, Indiana.”

“The 2015 survey also recorded a fifth year of steady increase in the average number of acres planted to cover crops by survey respondents, at almost 374,000 acres this year. The average number of cover-crop acres per farm in the annual surveys has nearly tripled over the past five years. The average cover-crop acreage per respondent planting a cover crop was 300 acres in 2015.”

From 1200 respondents, the survey determined that cereal rye and annual ryegrass are still the top cover crop seeds used. Here’s the breakout of use reported by farmers:

“Among cover-crop species, cereal grains and grasses are most popular, planted by 84 percent of cover-crop users. Cereal rye accounted for 44 percent of the total cover-crop acres in 2015. Annual ryegrass was a distant second with about half cereal rye’s acreage. Oats was third, covering 17 percent of respondents’ land in 2015. Triticale and winter barley rounded out the top-five cereal grains and grasses.”

It also appears that brassicas, including radish, turnips, rapeseed and canola, continue to gain in use, especially as the practice of seeding four or more cover crop species together in a mix continues to increase.

Interestingly, the top reason farmers cited use of cover crops was because it aids the improvement of soil health. The CTIC had assumed previously that the main reason was because it improved the chances of better production and, thus, profit.

Midwest Cover Crop Council Helps Soybean Producers with Publication

The Midwest Cover Crop Council is a beneficial site for learning a great deal about specifics on successful cover crops. Click here for their website: Here’s their summary of benefits of cover crops:

WHAT DO COVER CROPS DO FOR THE ENVIRONMENT?
  • Enhance biodiversity
  • Increase soil infiltration, leading to less flooding, leaching, and runoff
  • Create wildlife habitat
  • Attract honey bees and beneficial insects

 

WHAT DO COVER CROPS DO FOR FARMERS?
  • Reduce erosion
  • Improve soil quality, through increases in
    • Porosity (reduced compaction)
    • Soil organic matter
    • Water holding capacity
    • Beneficial microbes
    • Micro- and macro-invertebrates
  • Retain nutrients that would otherwise be lost
  • Add nitrogen through fixation (leguminous cover crops)
  • Combat weeds
  • Break disease cycles

Their new publication is specifically about helping soybean producers introduce cover crops into their rotation. Click here for the whole publication.

An intro paragraph in the publication says that “Interest in cover crops has increased greatly, as increasing numbers of meetings, workshops, and field days about the topic can attest. In 2012, the National Agricultural Statistics Service included cover crops in its census and reported that U.S. farmers planted 10.3 million acres of cover crops in 2012 — in the same year, farmers in the North Central Region (NCR) planted 4.5 million acres of cover crops. Cover crops represent 3.6 percent of total NCR cropland, so they have a long way to go before becoming common and accepted before or after soybeans (or in general).”