Small grains like barley or oats are often the first choice for establishing a cover crop on PP acres. The seed supplies of barley and oats are likely to be very tight and you may be looking far and wide to find some.

Researchers at Western Illinois University, Illinois State University, and several other institutions are in the midst of studying the viability of pennycress as a cash cover crop for farmers. Win Phippen, Director of the Alternative Crops Research program at Western, is excited about the progress they’re making.

Winter camelina is a winter-hardy brassica that is gaining traction in the Midwest as a cover crop ahead of corn or as an oilseed relay crop. Central Iowa farmer Mark Oehlerking recently used glyphosate to terminate his first ever winter camelina cover crop the second week of May, shortly after planting corn into it.

Interseeding cover crops produces greater biomass than drilling covers after harvest, and in rotations where corn follows corn, late fall application of manure sustains or improves yield compared to spring-applied fertilizer, according to this University of Minnesota study.

Over the past decade, fall cover crop adoption has grown in the U.S., according to data from USDA's Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS).

Besides building healthy soil, living roots are the tool to fix marginal lands. Salt-affected soils are an example of a hard-to-fix marginal land situation in South Dakota. There are annual and perennial plants that can tolerate more soil salts