Farmer shares ‘shocking’ soil health progress

FAIRBURY, Ill. — The Iffts planted their first cover crop 10 years ago on 50 acres, continued to increase acres year-over-year and have seen the benefits of this practice.

“We’re committed. We like it. We love what it’s doing to our soil. We feel it’s helped our profitability, plus all the other benefits of reducing erosion, improving water quality and all of those issues,” said Jim Ifft at the Vermilion Headwaters Watershed spring management of cover crops field day March 10.

He said soil tests were done on his 80 acres adjacent to his homestead. The first was conducted five years ago and another was done last year.

“The way those organic matter numbers skyrocketed in five years is truly amazing. The progress we made in soil health over five years using a three-year rotation is really kind of shocking,” said Ifft, who farms with his wife, Julie, and son, Josh.

Ifft stressed the three-year rotation with cover crops to cover the soil year-round is the key to building soil health.

“We’ve taken some of our land into a three-year rotation. Through our cover crop seed business we’ve developed a market for small grains which helps. But I’m at the point now where I would do it on the land that I own even if I had to use commodity wheat,” he said.

“The way those organic matter numbers skyrocketed in five years is truly amazing.”

—  Jim Ifft, farmer, north-central Illinois

“That cover crop that we can put in the first two weeks of August or anytime in August into that small grain changes soil so much faster. I have some facts and figures on this farm here where we’ve been doing that five or six years now. We are truly reducing inputs.

“Here where we have true soil health building we are able to cut fertilizer inputs.

“I’m talking 101-day convention corn in a tar spot year, no fungicide and no soil insecticide applied was our best corn. We took it out with 14% moisture — no drying. I’m excited about that.”

Ifft acknowledged a three-year crop rotation is a little harder to sell for rented ground and they have a couple of their landowners onboard with the practice.

“We really like the three-year rotation with the soil covered all year. If you already have livestock it’s frosting on the cake. A three-year rotation with livestock would really take it to another level,” he said.

His journey into cover crops was filled with successes and failures, but Ifft believes it’s worth it in the end in terms of soil health, improving water quality and profitability.

Here are a few of Ifft’s comments on cover crop experiences he shared with the dozens in attendance.

On Cover Selections

“I did a lot of test plots in my journey through this cover crop deal. I had 40, 50 species out here in 25-foot squares. I learned probably about all I could learn from seeing the different species grow here.

“We don’t have those old test plots now that I had for five or six years. I quit those two years ago, but I consider this 80 acres (adjacent to the homestead) that Julie and I own as kind of our research farm where I tried things that I wouldn’t try somewhere else.

“The west 25 acres was oats this year planted into a 12-way cover crop. That will go back to corn. It has some legumes growing and everything else is winter-kill. That’s awesome what it does to the soil. We had all kinds of brassicas, legume, grasses and broadleaf out there.

“The field next to us was corn and we planted oats, winter camelina and broadleaf mustard in it, and that will go to soybeans.

“Winter camelina is one they did some research on it in Iowa. It’s supposedly an overwintering brassica. We’ve got several hundred acres of it in different places going ahead of corn and soybeans and I’ll let you know how it turns out.

“I didn’t have any luck here getting barley to overwinter. We sell some barley. I like the idea of barley, but I cannot get it to overwinter.

“Triticale overwinters fine. That’s our pet way to use cover crops ahead of corn at the current time. It changes every year. Every year we make mistakes. We do things different. We tweak it, but that’s what we like ahead of corn right now.

“This field was seeded Sept. 27. The oats got about 12 to 15 inches high. Now it’s died down. I’m excited about putting soybeans into that.”

On Seeding

“I like the theory behind the airplane application. We’ve used the airplane ourselves. I would watch the forecast and rainfall. If you get a rain, it’s very successful.

“The first time I used cover crops, it didn’t rain, and I would have been better off taking that money and taking Julie on a vacation. So, the airplane is good if you get a rain to get it started.

“One other caution, and it’s not the pilot’s fault, they don’t do a very good job around the edge of the field. They can’t. So, after the airplane application we usually do 80 feet around the edge of the field with a drill.”

On Termination

“Using nitrogen with Roundup is a flat no-no. We learned the hard way. It eventually did die, but it felt like it took forever and I used a fairly high rate that year.

“Those new to cover crops have some trepidation about terminating cereal rye in soybeans.

“When we started, we terminated all of our rye early. That was our standard procedure. We did it before we were planting our corn in our other fields.

“The cereal rye would be about knee-high when we terminated it. We would then plant our corn and we’d go back maybe eight or nine days later and the rye would be lying down and we’d plant our soybeans into it. That worked like a dream.

“We’ve done it all for termination. We started terminating early and then we’d go all the way to 18 to 24 inches and 100% green. That’s where I like to plant green at knee-high if I can get Mother Nature to cooperate with me, that’s where I’d do it every year.

“Don’t be afraid, there are a lot of things that work. You just have to manage your way through it. If you’re not comfortable, kill it early. If you can stand it and wait quite awhile, it’s not going to be a disaster. You can get by with a lot when you have soybeans into cereal rye. See what hand Mother Nature deals you and as you get more comfortable using cover crops you get over that initial fear.

“We’ve evolved over time and now we want to plant soybeans early. We planted soybeans the first week of April the last few years. Some of them froze and some of them haven’t, but that’s what we did. We think the reward is still worth the risk. That changes the whole scenario as far as termination.

“One thing we learned, we still have a trailer sprayer on the tractor. I talked to some people and decided I wanted to get a little more growth out of this rye. I went out about five days after I planted the soybeans and I killed my rye. The rye gained almost a week’s growth.

“But with the trailer sprayer and 18.4 tires in 15-inch rows we drive on some soybeans. Those soybeans were just sprouting and just germinated. I found out later from some plant people that bean is very vulnerable at that stage and it killed them. We didn’t have any beans in our wheel tracks.

“If you have a high-clearance sprayer with narrow tires it might not be an issue. If you have 30-inch rows it might not be an issue.”

On Corn Into Cover Crops

“We were very slow adopting corn into cover crops. There are guys doing it, but I would suggest getting very comfortable with cover crops before you attempt it. We are no-tilling a lot of corn now.

“We have found a mix that we like for this area for cover crops ahead of corn of a low rate of triticale and oats. If we’re early enough we’ll add crimson clover and brassica if we can get it done in September.

“We’ve really gotten to like triticale. It breaks dormancy about two weeks later than cereal rye. It kills very easy. It’s much easier to manage and we can no-till corn into that and it works like a dream.

“We didn’t do no-till corn until we ran cereal rye for about five years and we could see the difference in the soil. We were getting more tilth, more structure.”