This week we’re paying a visit to west central Illinois, where we find fifth-generation farmer Andrew Reuschel hard at work, wrapping up another long day of planting.
His family has been experimenting with cover crops since the 1970’s. A true cover crop enthusiast, Andrew has tried about 30 different species over the past several years.
On this edition of Cover Crop Strategies, brought to you by La Crosse Seed, Andrew takes us inside his “shotgun blast” approach to planting covers, and which ones have earned a spot in his consistent rotation alongside corn and soybeans.
Andrew’s family also recently took part in a scientific study on the impact of cover crops. He shares with us the eye-opening takeaways.
The Cover Crop Strategies podcast series is brought to you by La Crosse Seed.
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Full Transcript
Noah Newman:
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast. I'm your host, Noah Newman, associate editor. Solving the soil health puzzle, La Crosse Seed has you covered. Cover crops are an important piece to future profit but it takes work and is puzzling at times. La Crosse Seed delivers quality SoilFirst cover crop products, plus training and tools to help you succeed. Whether you're looking to grow your cover crop seed business, get product tips, or find a local SoilFirst dealer, La Crosse Seed is ready to help learn more at soil1st.com, that's soil 1-S-T dot-com, or call 800-356-SEED.
Noah Newman:
Our journey takes us to west central Illinois where we find fifth generation farmer, Andrew Reuschel, hard at work wrapping up another long day of planning. Now his family's been experimenting with cover crops since the 1970s, he's a true cover crop enthusiast. Over the past several years he's tried about 30 different species. On this addition of the podcast andrew takes us inside his shotgun blast approach to planting covers, and which ones have earned a spot in his consistent rotation alongside corn and soybeans. Andrew's family also recently took part in a scientific study on the impact of cover crops, he'll share with us the eye opening takeaways.
Noah Newman:
You haven't been getting a lot of sleep the past few nights, right? You've been really busy planning. How's that going?
Andrew Reuschel:
Oh, it goes good until you break down. It's not fast go or many acres you cover, it's how many times you stop when it comes to planting and combining. We've had a few breakdowns and slows everything up. Other than that the actual act of planting is going good.
Noah Newman:
Yeah, you told me you just did back to back 20 hour days or something like that. I don't even know how you're awake right now, and kudos to you for even be able to do this podcast right now because you have not gotten much sleep.
Andrew Reuschel:
Yeah, I did a 20 hour day, followed by a 20 hour day, followed by a 28 hour day. I took a little bit of a nap and then we're back at it trying to finish. I'm trying to finish my last 80 here of my priority list before it rains this evening. I'll sleep after it rains.
Noah Newman:
Now, are you a big coffee drinker? Because I don't know how you have this energy. It's pretty impressive.
Andrew Reuschel:
Well, I have to be honest, I did just finish my third cup of coffee of the day.
Noah Newman:
Wow. That's impressive. I only had two so you've got me beat so far. People not familiar with your operation, andrew, just kind of give us your background, where you're located, and just kind of the basics of Andrew Reuschel's operation.
Andrew Reuschel:
I'm over here near Golden, Illinois. It's in west central Illinois, between the Illinois and the Mississippi Rivers. We have very much high variation of different types of soil types. We farm everything from white timber dirt/old reclaimed strip mines, flat black muck, poor, poor drainage, and everything in between. I farm with my dad, we farm corn and soybeans over here. I believe I'm the fifth generation at our house there. My grandpa got really big into cover crops a long time ago like in the '70s and '80s.
Andrew Reuschel:
With cover crops and no-till, they got into it and then had a couple roadblocks, and then made some changes, and then kind of got away from it. Then kind of got back into it, and then kind of had some hiccups or whatever and got back away from it. My dad and my grandpa had been flirting and playing with cover crops, and no-till, and minimal tillage pretty much since the '80s, but never really fully committed to it more than a decade straight. When I got back to the farm we took this cover crop thing and really ran with the cover crop, and so we've been doing various levels of cover crops for about the last decade, my dad and I have.
Noah Newman:
How many species of cover crops do you have growing right now?
Andrew Reuschel:
I'm currently planting a field, right now I'm plant soybeans into some fall-seeded cereal rye, but I'm also looking at annual rye grass that was interseeded into the corn stocks that year, so that's two species that are growing. There's some red clover that was there from the year before, I see some barley from the year before. There's a lot of volunteers in here from the last three or four years of free seed for me, so that's kind of nice. When it comes to cover crops ahead of soybeans you really can't go wrong with cereal rye, and it's been that way for a decade for us.
Andrew Reuschel:
Sometimes we play with other species depending on when we interseed it into the corn, and sometimes we only get it out there broadcast behind planting, and so then it's usually just cereal rye. Ahead of corn we do a lot of annual rye grass which is a completely different ball game. I don't know, I used to do a whole lot of different variations of species, kind of like a shotgun blast approach of everything. Now I feel like these days with the prices getting to be a little bit more simpler, just about three or four species each, just it out there and for the best, because I know they'll work.
Noah Newman:
Yeah. I mean, how much have they helped you reduce inputs when planting corn and soybeans?
Andrew Reuschel:
Yeah, in the beginning I really didn't have any way to measure that and so we weren't reducing anything in the beginning, we were just watching how the soil changed. Since I started taking biomass samples and trying to figure out the rate of decomposition, and how the nutrients are moving, and how much we have, and Haney samples, Haney soil tests. We've been trying to monitor it and give some sort of numbers, and then I just realized it's all weather-based, about how those nutrients cycle. You kind of use your best judgment but I would say that we use a whole lot less fertilizer, especially dry fertilizer, than the average Illinois farmer, whether that's good or bad yet we don't know. It's been almost seven or eight years of no phosphorus on some farms and I haven't seen any difference in our soil tests. I don't know, it's just still stuff that we are really trying to figure out, and I don't know if I'll ever get figured out.
Noah Newman:
Would you say that you guys are unique out there in your region of the state in terms of your cover crop usage, or are you seeing more farmers in Illinois adopt similar practices to what you're using right now?
Andrew Reuschel:
It's really easy to be on the farm, and have blinders on, and feel like you're on your own island, especially when all your neighbors are mostly full tillage. It's been fun. West central Illinois has a lot more rolling hills than what I would consider central Illinois and so you might see the adaption here in this area a little bit sooner because people are trying to get it for the erosion control, but also the livestock people are using them for livestock uses as well. It's been fun watching fields kind of turn green that has never been green before. You're like, "Is that wheat or is that a cover crop? What's going on over there?" I would say that it's very, very slow adaption, but more and more and more every year I see maybe an extra couple fields that I've never seen before in my very small little region. That's kind of fun, it's fun to see.
Noah Newman:
Yeah. I saw that you joined the Soil Health Partnership in 2017. Tell us a little bit about that.
Andrew Reuschel:
That was a program that was done with the Illinois Corn Growers Association where we tried to do a research study. It was supposed to be a five year study where we did strip trials of cover crop versus no-till, trying to determine the economic data. That was really interesting. I don't know, trial work gets pretty monotonous or pretty annoying when you're to go, go, go, go, go. To have to stop and weigh, and do weigh wagons, and take all this data. At the same time it showed us a lot of really cool things.
Andrew Reuschel:
One thing that they kept saying is, "Oh, you're having anywhere between a five to nine bushel increase of yield on the cover crop versus the no-till, and that was after five years." I was like, "Yeah, I could have told you that." I could see that every year. To have that actual data backed by somebody, that was really interesting. I think what took it for me was the entomology. They had an entomologist come out from the university of Illinois and he did a whole bunch of different sticky traps, fly traps, and dug pits, and took all this data. I think what my biggest eye opening from all that was in the no-till it was like 50% of the insects that he collected were pests and 50% were beneficial.
Noah Newman:
Wow.
Andrew Reuschel:
Then in the cover crop, and it was just a monocultural cereal rye crop, and at the time of the tests that were taken it was not a very good stand of cereal rye. It wasn't like big biomass that you see at this time, the cereal rye was maybe about a foot tall. It was 80% of the insects inside of that cereal rye were beneficial, and then 20% were non-beneficial. It's something so little. Something so little, so minuscule, one tiny little baby variable changed that data so much. That was one of those things that was like, oh, there's so much more to this than what I see with my soil, what I can feel with my soil, what I can smell with my soil, right? There's even more to this because the bugs are reacting to it. I don't know, that was just one of those pieces of data that I really was happy that I saw. That was really fun and interesting.
Noah Newman:
Yeah, that is very interesting. I mean 80% beneficial? That's eye opening. No way you could have been expecting it to be that high.
Andrew Reuschel:
Yeah, especially on a monocultural cereal rye crop that was only like a foot tall. Yeah, I didn't think that there'd be any difference at all [inaudible 00:12:27] I didn't expect that one.
Noah Newman:
That's one big benefit you've seen from the usage of cover crops. Any other benefits come to mind?
Andrew Reuschel:
Oh, well farmers always want to know about the economical data. They proved the five bushel, I always thought we had about five bushel, but proved anywhere between five and nine bushel. They also proved that it got better over time, right? Year one just was a few bushels increased, year two was a better increase, but by the time we were on year four when the program ended, they were saying it was a nine bushel increase. It was fun to kind of watch that kind of climb. No, I'm sure it will plateau off until we have to change some management strategies to get it to increase again, but I think farmers always want that economical data. That's what they're always craving for, that hard evidence.
Noah Newman:
Back to the podcast in just a second, but once again let's thank our sponsor, La Crosse Seed. Solving the soil health puzzle, La Crosse Seed has you covered. Cover crops are an important piece to future profit but it takes work and is puzzling at times. La Crosse Seed delivers quality SoilFirst cover crop products, plus training and tools to help you succeed. Whether you're looking to grow your cover crop seed business, get product tips, or find a local SoilFirst dealer, La Crosse Seed is ready to help. Learn more at soil1st.com, that's soil 1-S-T dot-com, or call 800-356-SEED. Now back to the podcast.
Noah Newman:
You said it took a little bit of time, is that some advice maybe you'd offer to a farmer looking to get started with cover crops, that you don't necessarily see the benefits overnight, that it requires a little bit of patience, and trial and error?
Andrew Reuschel:
Yeah, definitely. When I got back to the farm and I saw the benefits of the cover crop I jumped in whole hog and never looked back. I probably jumped a little too far and a little too fast because I definitely had a lot of growing pains with some things, kind of got my neck cut a few times, but that was all part of the learning experience too. That's probably why I learned so much so fast. It is definitely nothing that I would advise anybody else to do, I would never advise anyone to just go whole hog and jump at it, and get as motivated about it as I was. Be patient, watch it, understand it, and then obviously adapt it over time and continue to learn from it, right?
Andrew Reuschel:
I think that's one of the coolest things, is to go into a field that has had cover crops and minimal tillage for the most amount of time and be out there walking it, looking around, seeing what the soil conditions are like obviously to be planting here this spring, but that ground is just rich, earthy aroma when you pull up a cereal rye plant to see what that moisture looks like, and to have earthworms in there nonstop. That rich, earthy aroma of that ground was something that had been lacking, kind of been a little stale smelling in the past. You have to see all these little benefits and they all add up to something big over time. Slow and steady wins the race I guess.
Noah Newman:
I remember you said that your dad and your grandpa, they would experiment with cover crops, so maybe they'd start and stop. What's the longest they ever went with sticking with it? I mean have you stuck with it longer than they have?
Andrew Reuschel:
My grandpa tried no-till corn before there was any support for no-till corn in the '80s and he got bit. Then they decided that they were going to do no-till and cover crops. Well, they did it in the '90s, and in the '90s it was super wet. It was like three years in a row over here in the early '90s it was really wet, and then they just had issue after issue after issue, and so then they quit. Actually I would say that dad has had a field of cover crops probably the longest, even if we worked the cover crop into the ground like several years ago. Dad's probably got the longest field. We have a farm that has deer hunter on it and the deer hunter wanted radishes, and so we had radishes on farms from 2000 and ... When was Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans?
Noah Newman:
Oh, that would've been-
Andrew Reuschel:
'07-ish?
Noah Newman:
2005, 2006, I want to say sometime around then. Yeah.
Andrew Reuschel:
Okay, so 2006. We've had radishes on one farm since 2005 timeframe, but again we didn't know what we were doing way back then because there wasn't support for this stuff either. We were putting on six pounds of radishes an acre and being like, "This is awesome," but we were sending our soil backwards because we didn't have any carbon in that cover crop mix either. Anyway, again, you got to keep messing with stuff, and you got to keep learning, you got to keep talking to people, and you got to keep trying things, and you got to keep observing and studying this. This isn't a one size fit all, it isn't a one year fit all, there's obviously slots that things work really well, obviously cereal rye in front of soybeans. There's just more to these cover crops than just throwing it out there, and then just letting it do its thing, and then walking away from it. I don't know if we will grasp that whole understanding within our lifetime. Maybe we will, maybe we won't, but it's still pretty fun.
Noah Newman:
Well, speaking of that, of studying and fun, are there any new cover crop cocktails, as you would say, that you're experimenting with this year, or maybe you're thinking of in the near future?
Andrew Reuschel:
I really started to kind of just fine tune things down to what I would call like a broad acre aspect, something that I can spread out and do about 800 acres, which for me has been ... I call it Seagram's 7 and 7, but it's seven pounds of cereal rye or seven pounds of barley, and seven pounds of annual rye grass. Depending on the year, the timing, and the price, I'll add crimson clover and some rapeseed into it. Then I've been putting that into a twin row situation and drilling it, and then being able to come in and strip-till corn.
Andrew Reuschel:
That's kind been my go-to in front of corn for the last couple years, kind of fine tuning that in. It gives me the cover crop, not too much biomass that I have to work with in case it gets wet, but I'm still getting some good action going on. Then cereal rye in front of beans, those have just kind of been my go-to standards. Now we also have acres that we play on, and when we play, I mean it is full on just ... It is a shotgun blast and those species can ... I could plant 30 species, no big deal, because I'm just watching and observing what works. What works on the high ground? What works on the low ground? What works? Why is it thicker on the high ground? Why is it thicker on the low ground? And their interactions together. When we have lot of variable ground there's never a one size fit all.
Noah Newman:
Well, speaking of those-
Andrew Reuschel:
I'm more of a shotgun blast man.
Noah Newman:
Those grounds that you say you play with, off the of your head, I might putting you on spot here, but any revelation off the top of your head that you could think of, something that you learned just from experimenting with different species or different trials?
Andrew Reuschel:
Well, I've learned to try to make mixes with wet feet and dry feet, plants that like wet feet and plants that like dry feet. I don't know what the weather's going to do, and when you got hills and hollers all in the same path, I would rather ... Instead of having a perfectly uniform looking field of a cover crop field, I would rather the species reflect my soils, and start changing them instead of having that picture perfect, just beautiful field. Obviously I think a lot of people know that cereal rye doesn't do well with wet feet, and we've had some pretty wet springs over the last several years, and so I don't want to picture perfect field of cereal rye and then it drown out in my wet spots.
Andrew Reuschel:
Barley has seemed to handle the wet feet a little bit better depending on if I can get it in earlier. Wheat has also kind of withstand the wet feet a little bit better than the rye as well, but those aren't my favorite cover crops, right? They're not near as good as cereal rye for what I was looking for, for that biomass and for the root structure. To have that other stuff in there, it really flourishes it, that barley and the wheat would really take off, and at least I have a stand where my ground is really poor drainage, so it's still working.
Noah Newman:
Well, Andrew, for a guy who hasn't gotten much sleep you're pretty sharp. This has been a great interview, I really appreciate the time. Anything else you want to add or tell our audience about before we let you go?
Andrew Reuschel:
I would say the most important thing when cover crops is to find people that you trust, to seek their advice. That person doesn't have to be local, you just have to find people to have experience that you can then turn around and tailor it back to what your purpose and what your goal is. Don't just take blatant advice over the internet, there's a lot of people that have had experience but they can't share it, or spread it, or change it to their own ... Oh shoot, got a bump that I didn't know about. One other thing about cover crops, man, you have cover crops out in your field, and then you have a little bump and you forget about it because you can't see it when the cereal rye is three foot tall.
Noah Newman:
This is an action packed podcast, I like it.
Andrew Reuschel:
I forgot that I cut that drainage right there. Yeah, you got to tailor everything back to your own farm, and to your own goals, and to your own mindset, and there's a lot of people that can't do that. You got to seek advice from people that can help you in that regard. Everyone has two cents to give you in terms of advice but that's all it's worth, you've got to be able to take it home, tailor it, and make it work for you. This stuff doesn't have to hard, it's really easy. It's all about mindset change. I guess that would be my advice, is take it home, tailor it to you, seek good advice from others.
Andrew Reuschel:
Then also that advice that you're seeking from others, keep them in the loop with what's going on. Those guys could be your support group in terms of working things out, because there's a lot of people that will make this sound like it is the silver bullet, right? There is no silver bullets, there's just a new management trial. This stuff comes and it's hard, there's things that you have to learn, there's things that you have to adjust, and it can be tough. You need people there that have been through there, that have the experience to help you go through all those different stages of uncertainty.
Noah Newman:
Well, great stuff, Andrew. That's some really good advice there. I tell you what, next time I'm in Illinois, I don't know when it will be, but I'll swing by and bring you a cup of coffee if I'm in the area.
Andrew Reuschel:
Well, hopefully we'll be done planting by then and we won't be rained out anymore.
Noah Newman:
You never know with Illinois weather, I know it gets pretty crazy over there.
Andrew Reuschel:
It's got a mind of its own.
Noah Newman:
Thanks to Andrew Reuschel for joining us this week. Before we go let's once again thank our sponsor, La Crosse Seed. Solving the soil health puzzle, La Crosse Seed has you covered. Cover crops are an important piece to future profit but it takes work and is puzzling at times. La Crosse Seed delivers quality SoilFirst cover crop products, plus training and tools to help you succeed. Whether you're looking to grow your cover crop seed business, get product tips, or find a local SoilFirst dealer, La Crosse Seed is ready to help. Learn more at soil1st.com, that's soil 1-S-T dot-com, or call 800-356-SEED. Thank you so much for being with us this week, hope you enjoyed the podcast, and remember until next time for all things cover crops head to covercropstrategies.com.
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