CHESTERFIELD, Mo. — Farmers are using diverse strategies to plant cover crops and a variety of plant species to accomplish their soil health goals, according to a Soil Health Partnership survey.
SHP recently released the results of a survey of 82 farmers across 11 states that are enrolled in the program’s network about cover crop usage on their trails sites in the fall of 2019.
The survey’s intent is to provide SHP farmers, as well as those outside the network context on cover crop usage, practices and cost. The data will help answer important questions about what type of management practices lead to successful outcomes.
Forty-seven percent of respondents used a single cover crop species, 31% used two to three species and 22% utilized more than three species.
Cereal rye was the most popular among the mixes at 50%, followed by oats at 42%, rapeseed at 45%, radish at 37%, clover at 29%, peas at 21%, barley at 13% and annual ryegrass at 11%.
More than half of farmers planted between Sept. 15 and Nov. 3, but almost 40% of farmers planted before or after these dates. Planting time depends on region, cash crop rotation and species.
Due to labor constraints or higher latitudes, 25% of farmers interseeded or overseeded cover crops into a standing cash crop. Of those planting a cover crop, 31% reported contracting someone outside of their operation to plant it.
Costs
The cost of cover crop seed was $14 per acre for a single species, $16.66 per acre for two- or three-way mix and $22.50 per acre for more than three species.
Forty-seven percent of respondents seeded using a drill at a cost of $14.50 per acre. Broadcast seeding — 32% of those surveyed — cost $10 per acre. The aerial seeding cost averaged $13.88 per acre for the 14% of respondents who used that option.
The survey then went deeper as more than 4 in 5 farmers of the 47% planting a single species cover crop used cereal rye.
Ninety-three percent of those using cereal rye planted it at or after harvest — 57% drilled, 18% broadcast with incorporation and 25% other.
The average seeding rate for cereal rye was 48 pounds per acre at a seed cost of $12.97 per acre. The average cost of seeding was $14.13 per acre.
“Cereal rye is popular because it produces a large amount of biomass, which can keep soil in place, scavenge residual nitrogen, or provide weed-suppressing residue depending on the cover crop goals,” said Jim Isermann, SHP field manager in northern Illinois and Wisconsin. “It also is winter hardy, allowing for a wide planting window, relatively easy to chemically terminate and seed is rather cheap.”
Data Mining
In an SHP-hosted podcast following the release of the survey results, Isermann said SHP collects a large amount of information, including some geospatial yield data and soil tests.
“Collecting the information on the practices that the farmers are actually adopting that affected those results is very important. So, obviously, that’s a good step to take, to just collect what is going on with the cover crops, how they’re applying it,” Isermann said.
“But it’s really trying to get at the success of the cover crop or the soil health practice because right now we are in an area where we talk a lot about cover crops, but we’re kind of lacking overall in the industry and how do we assess the successfulness of that cover crop. When does it work? How does it work? Under what circumstances are the right moves? We’re lacking a lot of information in terms of what are the practical management considerations for growers to have.
“This survey is a beginning step of that. So, collecting that data to start to pair it with the other sets of data that we collect and see how it affects the other information, but it’s also a good baseline level for us to see what the growers are doing now and compare what’s going to change five years from now.
“One thing that I’ve definitely seen over the years with using cover crops, that farmers, whether it’s on their own personal journey of starting off with something simple and moving to something more advanced, or even just the way that we’re approaching cover crops compared to 15 years ago, there’s a lot of changes.
“It’s good to record that information. And then just the basic information of how much money farmers are spending on this. What’s the cost to do it? How are they getting the job done? We’re trying to capture all that in this type of a survey.”
SHP is a farmer-led initiative that promotes the adoption of soil health practices for economic and environmental benefit. A program of the National Corn Growers Association, the partnership extends to more than 200 working farms in 16 states.
While building a peer-to-peer network, SHP collects on-farm data to evaluate the impacts of soil health practices on the soil, the environment and the farmer’s bottom line.