Cover Crop Strategies editors encounter a variety of articles, social media posts, podcasts and videos that offer a unique look at various aspects of our great agricultural industry. Here is our favorite content from the past week:
- Can We Drill the Rye Before the Rain?
- Learning From Local Farmers —Sharing Advice and Experiences
- Making the Most of Every Acre —Cover Crops, Cattle and Goats
- What Does Cover Crop Carbon Actually Cost and Pay?
- Seeding Cover Crops on a Vegetable Farm
Can We Drill the Rye Before the Rain?
On Viking Valley Farm in southeast Minnesota, fall activities include drilling a cereal rye cover crop following corn silage harvest. They hope that the rye will provide ground protection, scavenge nutrients and prevent the ground from being overly muddy when it's time to spread manure. Follow along to see a day on the farm!
Learning From Local Farmers — Sharing Advice and Experiences
What does it actually look like to try no-till and cover crops? In this Marquette County, Wisconsin farmer panel, local producers talk about their experiences, from successes and learning curves to experimenting with planting green, interseeding and drone-seeded cover crops. They share why they’ve continued these practices, including keeping soil in place, protecting nutrients and moisture, and building healthier soils, while emphasizing the importance of starting small, learning year by year and learning from other farmers.
Making the Most of Every Acre — Cover Crops, Cattle and Goats
What happens when you stop thinking of your acres as having just one job? In this episode of Ranchonomics, John Haskell talks with Greg Christiansen about how he has built a farming system that combines cash crops, cover crops and livestock grazing across more than 2,000 acres. Greg shares how he got started with cover crops, why he continues to plant them on nearly every acre he can and how grazing those crops adds another layer of value to the operation.
What Does Cover Crop Carbon Actually Cost and Pay?
In this farmdoc daily webinar, experts from the University of Illinois and Texas Tech University dive into data from the Precision Conservation Management (PCM) program to explore the field-level economics of cover crop adoption. Laura Gentry (Illinois Corn Growers Association) and Saurav Raj Kunwar (Texas Tech University) discuss the trade-offs between production costs, greenhouse gas emissions and soil carbon sequestration. Learn how conservation incentives and carbon markets can help offset the private costs for farmers adopting these practices.
Seeding Cover Crops on a Vegetable Farm
In northwest Louisiana, Ryan Farms Produce plants Austrian winter peas and wheat ahead of (hopefully) incoming rain. The cover crops are seeded into a field that had previously been under plastic mulch for the purpose of weed control in vegetables.
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