Cover Crops Provide Multiple Benefits, Higher Yields

From the USDA:

Posted by Ciji Taylor, Natural Resources Conservation Service, on January 21, 2015 at 3:00 PM

USDA employees, Paul Youngstrum and Eric McTaggart, examine a cover crop radish. NRCS photo by Jody Christiansen.

Corn and soybean farmers across the nation saw an increase in yields last year thanks in part to soil health-building cover crops.

More than 1,900 farmers responded last winter to a survey about cover crops conducted by the USDA’s North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program and the Conservation Technology Information Center. The results to the survey were released in late fall.

Farmers who planted corn in a field following a cover crop had a 3.1 percent increase in yield compared to side-by-side fields with no cover crops. Likewise, soybean yields increased 4.3 percent following cover crops, according to the survey.

With assistance from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), farmers and ranchers are using cover crops to protect soil – their most valuable asset. Over the past six years, NRCS has helped landowners plant close to six million acres of cover crops by providing both financial and technical assistance.

Practices, like cover crops, help increase organic matter in the soil. In fact, one percent of organic matter in the top six inches of soil can hold about 27,000 gallons of water per acre. Increasing organic matter increases the holding capacity for water making land more resilient to extreme weather.

“By using practices like cover crops that enhance soil health, there will be more soil organic matter development and higher production potential. That results in a higher return on investment and true economic growth,” said Barry Fisher, NRCS Indiana soil health specialist.

Highlights of the 2013-2014 survey include:

• Cover crop acreage among survey respondents increased by 30 percent per year.
• Winter cereals – including winter wheat, cereal rye and triticale – were the most popular cover crops, planted by 73 percent of respondents.
• Legumes, which could include clover, winter pea, vetch and others, were planted by 55 percent of respondents.
• 63 percent of the cover crop users said they had never received financial assistance or payments to grow cover crops.
• Yield benefits rose as farmers reported more years of experience with cover crops.
• The top perceived challenges for cover crops were noted as the time required to plant and manage cover crops, terminating cover crops, and selecting the right cover crop varieties.

Cover crops provide numerous benefits in addition to yield increases. They help improve soil health by reducing erosion, increasing soil organic matter content, improving air and water movement through soil, reducing soil compaction, capturing and recycling nutrients in the soil profile and managing soil moisture to promote biological nitrogen fixation.

This is significant as farmers reported the three benefits they desired most from cover crops were increased soil organic matter, reducing erosion and reducing compaction.

“Cover crops mimic what Mother Nature was doing before man began farming. She always kept herself covered and always had some kind of live roots year round. The closer we can mimic this the better our soils will become over time,” said one survey respondent.

Farmers who had four or more years of experience with cover crops saw a higher increase in bushels per acre than those with zero to three years of experience, most likely due to an increase in organic matter.

Another survey respondent commented: “Cover crops are not a one-time practice but a long-term system. This system has enormous benefits while the individual practices making up the system are hard to quantify in the short run.”

Farmers interested in learning more about soil health-building cover crops and soil health management systems should visit www.nrcs.usda.gov/GetStarted or a local USDA service center.

Illinois Farmer Ralph Upton knows first-hand how much soil and crop yields can improve with proper use of cover crops. Upton has been using cover crops since the late 1990s. NRCS photo by Ciji Taylor.

Conservation Programs Help Nebraska Farmer Install, Improve Irrigation System

From USDA:

Posted by Morgan Rezac, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Nebraska, on December 4, 2014 at 11:00 AM

Center pivot irrigation systems use less water and are more efficient at uniformly distributing water across a field. NRCS photo by Jacob Robison.

As a little girl, Mary Kay Lyon followed her father around their south central Nebraska farm always dreaming of one day owning the operation herself. Lyon left the farm to attend college, but eventually made it back home when her father retired, determined to run the family farm.

“I wanted to farm since I was old enough to walk,” Lyon said.

Lyon grows corn and soybeans and raises cattle on the farm. Upon her return, she immediately began looking for ways to make improvements. Their crops have always been watered through an irrigation system, but Lyon knew improvements were needed on the old water delivery system.

She reached out to her local service center of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, (NRCS), in Holdrege, Nebraska to discuss how to achieve her land improvement goals through conservation practices.

Lyon’s objective was to install an efficient irrigation system that used less water and more uniformly applied water across a field. At the time, she was using an inefficient gated pipe system to irrigate her crops. This system used a large pipe that was laid across the end of the field and was perpendicular to the rows. Water was pumped through the pipe and gates would open up at each row allowing water to flow down the row to irrigate the crop.

She worked with Curtis Scheele, a water quality specialist at NRCS, to take advantage of assistance available through conservation programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, and the Conservation Stewardship Program, or CSP. NRCS conservation programs like EQIP provided her with technical and financial assistance to ensure the irrigation system was designed to meet the needs of the cropland, while delivering irrigation water in the most efficient manner possible.

Lyon installed a center pivot irrigation system. Pivot irrigation acts like a large sprinkler system that irrigates crops from water nozzles suspended above the crop. Pivots use much less water than other irrigation methods. Because one of Lyon’s fields is shaped like a rectangle, the swing arm of the center pivot covers each corner. The pivot will pull the arm in as the irrigation approaches the road, conserving water.

“A center pivot is 90 percent efficient compared to the gravity pipeline, which is only 50 percent efficient in getting water on the crops,” Scheele said. “By installing a center pivot, Mary Kay is able to apply fewer inches of water to her cropland. By using these programs to install more efficient irrigation systems, less water is required and there has been a decreased amount of erosion and run off.

CSP is a conservation program geared toward farmers wanting to take their conservation efforts to the next level. Through CSP, she installed a remote monitoring system for her center pivots, which increased the operating efficiency more by allowing her to monitor water performance from her computer or cell phone.

Conservation programs helped Lyon make other conservation improvements to her farm, including the use of no-till practices and repairing a decades-old windbreak.

No-till is when farmers don’t disc the soil when planting, only punching a small hole needed for a seed. As a result of farming with no-till methods, Lyon said she makes less passes across the field with her tractor. Over time, no till farming increases infiltration of water into the soil, increases water holding capacity of soil and organic matter in topsoil.

She also repaired the old windbreak, enabling it to better protect the farm and calving pens from the cold, while also providing shade for livestock in the summer. NRCS provided financial assistance for her to tear out the old windbreak trees and replace them with two new rows of cedars and pines.