A recent blog post from CIBO Technologies highlights an interesting and alarming trend in the world of cover crops. And sadly, this revelation might not be all that surprising for many regenerative farmers who have been planting covers and implementing other conservation agriculture practices on their farms for decades.
An excerpt from the blog says “CIBO's newly released 2025 practice data confirms a trend highlighted in the 2022 USDA Census: Cover crop adoption is moving too slowly. The constraint isn’t awareness — it’s economics, operational risk and the friction created by how practices are monitored and measured today.”
Some of the data from our most recent Cover Crops Operational Benchmark Study reaffirms this claim while some of it contradicts it as well, but of course it depends on what region and what type of farmer is being asked to complete a survey. Regardless, I think most of us can agree that we would like to see cover crops being adopted at a quicker rate and across a wider scale of farms across the nation and even globally.
No-Till and Cover Crop expert Randall Reeder even wrote a blog for No-Till Farmer last year delving into the “why” of the slow cover crop adoption issue.
And while this CIBO blog does go into some detail about the company’s new tech-product that could potentially help farmers adopt cover crops more efficiently, I’m curious what all of you readers have to say.
For those of you who have been planting cover crops for decades or even those of you who may have just recently implemented covers on just a few acres of your farm — what needs to be done to increase the scalability and cut down on the stigma that farmers seem to have about the potential difficulty of planting cover crops.
How many more deadly dust storms must we endure for farmers to wake up and realize that cover crops can not only improve soil health but actually save lives?
Feel free to comment your thoughts or email me directly at mvogel@lessitermedia.com. My inbox is always open. Or better yet, come chat with me about this in person next week at the 34th Annual National No-Tillage Conference in St. Louis, Mo., January 6-9. I hope to see you there and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
