Progress and perspectives with cover crops: Interpreting three years of farmer surveys on cover crops

Excerpt

In September of 2012, as a record-setting drought impacted farms across the United States, reports of an interesting nature kept popping up related to cover crops. A number of farmers who were using cover crops had started fall harvest and were finding that their corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merr.) fields planted after cover crops seemed to have better yields, in some cases with a sizeable benefit. This ran counter to the prevailing thought at the time among many farm advisors, which was that cover crops would hurt commodity yields in a dry year.

To find out if there was indeed something going on with yield benefits from cover crops, some modest funding support was provided from the North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program to the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC), a nonprofit based in Indiana with a history of doing survey work related to conservation practices, to conduct a survey of farmers who were using cover crops. The results of that survey, particularly with crop yields, proved eye-opening to many people around the country and actually contributed to changes in federal crop insurance policy pertaining to cover crops.

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