Everybody seems to be talking about cover crops. Rightfully so because, managed correctly, they can provide environmental benefits. Higher yield? Well, maybe, but probably not, at least in the near term, says Farm Journal Field Agronomist Ken Ferrie. And learning to manage cover crops carries a steep learning curve, he adds.
Your entrance into cover cropping might be easier if you frame it in terms of the sustainable triangle. Sustainability, which includes profitability, occurs at the intersection of three environments — the physical environment in each field; the natural environment, which is climate and weather; and the human environment.
Where those environments overlap is the sustainable triangle, an area you can expand with management.
The physical and natural environments place constraints on what cover crops you can grow. Except for a few aspects, such as improved drainage, you can’t change them much. But you can impact the human environment, which includes (among other things) finances, job satisfaction and the preferences of farm managers and landlords.
Unrealistic expectations about return on investment (ROI), part of the human environment, can pave the way to failure and disappointment. “When my customers want to start using cover crops, the first question I ask is what ROI do they want or expect from cover cropping,” Ferrie says.
Farmers who are new to no-till often view agronomic practice and cover crops as a package, but Ferrie prefers to examine them individually.
“Failing to separate them is unfair to no-till,” he says.
NO-TILL ROI
- Among Ferrie’s consulting clients, no-till produces some of the highest financial ROIs, but also some of the lowest. “The difference is due to management and the field environment,” he says.
- It’s not uncommon for no-till to lower input costs, improve yield and reduce erosion, which produces a positive financial ROI. In fact, financial ROI might remain positive, because of reduced cost, even if yield ends up slightly lower than with tillage.
COVER CROP ROI
- Ferrie’s 10 years of cover crop strip trials usually produced negative ROIs. “Even if we didn’t lose yield, there was no additional yield to offset the cost of the cover crop,” he says. When the financial ROI was positive it was because covers were grazed or chopped for feed; prevented sandy soil from blowing and cutting off corn or soybean plants; prevented soil erosion; were harvested for seed; or generated income from government incentives or carbon credit programs.
- But for making decisions about cover crops, Ferrie has another aspect to consider — true ROI. The financial ROI, of course, is profit. In contrast, Ferrie’s true ROI includes factors such as job satisfaction, quality of life and opportunity cost.
- The relative importance of each form of ROI varies by operator. “For example, the financial ROI from applying your own pesticides may be appealing to a farmer with plenty of labor,” Ferrie says. “But to another grower, the financial return may not make up for sacrificing time with the family or other quality-of-life activities, which are part of the true ROI. With cover crops, true ROI — improved soil health and reduced erosion — may outweigh the negative financial ROI.”
- Ferrie’s trials confirm cover crops’ impact on soil health and erosion. “Even without a positive financial ROI, these benefits can produce a positive true ROI for those who want to leave the farm as good or better than they found it,” he says. “These usually are owner-operated, multigeneration farms or stewardship-oriented landowners who offer to help tenants with the cost of cover cropping.”
In a 2015 strip trial on a central Illinois farm, three cover crop mixtures were planted behind a wheat crop, next to the grower’s normal double-crop soybeans. In 2016, corn planted behind the three cover crops matched or outyielded corn that followed the double-cropped soybeans. The second chart shows what Farm Journal Field Agronomist Ken Ferrie calls the opportunity cost — the difference in net profit over the two years that resulted from planting the cover crops and foregoing income from the 37-bu.-per-acre double-cropped soybeans. It ranged from $213 to $260 per acre.
You Decide to Plant Cover Crops ...
Experimenting with cover crops is a good idea, says Farm Journal Field Agronomist Ken Ferrie, as long as you understand the financial and true return on investment (ROI), start small and set reasonable objectives. “Having covers in your resume may pay off if a landowner is looking for an operator who will plant covers on his or her land,” he says. “And knowing the financial and true ROI lets you make more realistic cash rent bids when covers are required.” Some factors to keep in mind:
Geography may limit your cover crop possibilities. Growers farther south, and those who include wheat in their rotations, have more cover crop choices because of a longer planting window, but if you have to double-crop soybeans to make wheat compete with corn, omitting the soybeans in favor of a cover crop will have a negative impact on financial ROI. (See the graph on page 40 for one example.)
Some cover crops can sequester nitrogen for the following corn crop, reducing the amount of applied nitrogen. “In our experience, nitrogen is still cheaper to buy,” Ferrie points out. “But that could change next year if fertilizer becomes much more expensive.”
In Ferrie’s trials, growing covers ahead of corn has proven tougher than growing them ahead of soybeans. “With corn we often get a yield drag,” he says. “In soybeans we sometimes get a yield increase, but it’s not consistent. Often soybean yield remains the same, but we still have the cost of the cover crop.”
Try implementing no-till or strip-till before adding cover crops to smooth the transition. “Switching from tillage to no-till and covers at the same time creates the greatest opportunity for train wrecks,” Ferrie says. “The learning curve is extremely steep.”
The toughest situation arises when a grower is pressured by a landowner to switch from tillage to no-till and covers. This can occur if the landowner has been convinced the combination will benefit soil and produce a positive financial ROI. That landowner probably will expect you to enroll in government programs and split the payments with the owner. “Trying to convince an absentee landlord that not everything on the internet is true can be very difficult,” Ferrie says.
Read more in the “Farming the Sustainable Triangle” series.
Darrell Smith, who’s been with Farm Journal for 40-plus years, works alongside Ken Ferrie to break down the systems approach to farming.
