To gain a better grasp on the growing interest in cover crops, the National Cover Crop Survey, in its seventh year, checked in with growers from across the country.
Of the 795 respondents, 561 said they also use no-till because of the soil health benefits, including:
Structure. More than 60% of the cover crop users reported planting green — seeding cash crops into a growing or just-terminated cover crop. Of those respondents, more than half said it made management simpler or similarly complex.
Moisture. While cover crops can help with soil moisture, they can be detrimental in dry years, says Rob Myers, Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program vice president and lead survey researcher.
“Two-thirds of respondents said cover crops helped their soil management in 2022/23. If a grower had a dry spring and planted green, they might have run short on moisture for the cash crop. This was a year many terminated covers early,” Myers says.
Compaction. “In adding two, three or four species of cover crops in your mix, you can start to see the value in soil compaction,” says Ryan Heiniger, executive director of the Conservation Technology Information Center.
Heiniger’s numbers are right on par with the respondents’ mixes, as the majority use between two and five species in their cover crop mix.
Weed control. In corn, 42% reported saving money on herbicides after cover crops, and 55% saw no change in herbicide expenditures.
“Weed control on this level shows cost saving potential in herbicide programs,” Heiniger says.
Do Producers Use Cover Crops Exclusively for Incentives?
But there’s one major conclusion that can be drawn from the survey, according to Myers: ”The survey showed cover crop payments are an important factor in encouraging and helping farmers to transition into cover cropping, but once they see the soil health improvements and other cover crop benefits, most stick with cover crop planting long after the incentives end.”
Right at half of the survey respondents reported receiving a payment for cover crops in 2022.
