“Sustainability practices are not a silver bullet. They must be understood in concert with the specific geographies where they are adopted and the goals and needs of the individual farming operations.” Shefali Mehta – Soil Health Partnership Executive Director Before the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry.
By Mark Lambert - NCGA
The Spring of 2019 provided a good old-fashioned gut punch for the family of Randy and Nicole Small who farm near Neodesha, Kansas. And the breath robbing smack down went well beyond planting late or making the decision every farmer dread; to not plant at all.
Instead they saw Mother Nature, and some manmade decisions upriver, move massive amounts of water across their fields. The onslaught derailed decades of sweat equity in conservation practices designed to protect their soil, the environment and their livelihood.
“I’ve got places where the river swept off soil that we have been building for the last 20 years with no-till, using cover crops, buffers and wildlife plantings. Our goal was to keep the soil covered, manage nutrients and build organic matter and we lost it. It’s gone,” said Small, who was presented with the National Corn Growers Association’s Good Steward recognition in 2018.
He admits he has special challenges because of the amount of land the family farms in or near river bottoms. But those challenges have been managed successfully until 2019, which has been both calamitous and extraordinary. He also notes that his conservation practices worked well in other fields that didn’t take the brunt of the flooding and kept soil from being swept away.
That’s why Small remains a believer in the stewardship practices he has advocated for so long, and they remain part of his plan for the future.
Between 2012 and 2017, cover crop acres grew by an average of 8.4% a year compounded annually. If that growth rate continues, by the time of the next Census in 2022, there would be 23 million acres of cover crops, according to a new report Cover Crop Economics from USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education. Within a decade, in 2029, there would be 40.5 million acres of cover crops.
“The old adage that every farm, sometimes even every field, tells a story has never been so obvious as it has this year,” said Rachel Orf, NCGA Director of Stewardship and Sustainability. “The heavy rain and flooding were widespread in the U.S. but the impact on individual farmers varies by degree and situation. It appears cover crops worked well overall in protecting soil but some of the exceptions are pretty tragic.”
In Central Minnesota, Rick Schlichting and daughter Jocelyn Schlichting Hicks, farm along the headwaters of the Mississippi. NCGA’s 2019 Good Stewards say this Spring was largely business as usual with only minor delays. The sandy soils they farm proved to be an advantage in 2019 given their capacity to drain faster.
“The sandy soil makes us resistant to some of the major weather swings. The drought years don’t get us because were under irrigation and the heavy rain years don’t get us because our soils capacity to drain quickly,” Jocelyn said. “Our cover crop is really more for wind erosion purposes, to build organic matter and hold more nitrogen. That’s why cover crops are important on our farm. We would like to hold more water than we do, so a heavy rain year has almost no effect on us at all.”
And cover crops are working on many farms and success is driving the expanded acres, according to the USDA research. Although the number of farm operations with cover crops significantly increased, the growth rate was even faster in the number of cover crop acres per farm, showing that once farmers got started with cover crops, they kept multiplying their acreage.
Tim Smith of Eagle Grove, Iowa was on the lower end of the spectrum in 2019 when it came to heavy rains and flooding, but his conservation practices got a thorough workout the two previous years.
“In 2014 we had 10 days to two weeks with 10-14 inches of rain. Having cover crops and other conservation practices in place definitely reduced erosion on my farm,” said Tim Smith of Eagle Grove, Iowa. “North Central Iowa is a pretty flat area comparatively but having cover crops out there and no-till had definite benefits in reducing soil loss and that’s one of my big priorities of protecting the farm and keeping the soil here.”
Smith, NCGA’s first Good Steward in 2014 and an early participant in the Soil Health Partnership, said cover crops are a big part of his stewardship management plan because of the benefits they provide for water quality.
“It was my increased interest in water quality that originally got me using cover crops in 2011.” Smith said. “My nitrate levels going out my tile are lower for sure, even in a wet Spring. Testing showed nitrate levels of 10 parts parts per million going into my bioreactor and 5 parts per million coming out. Before changing my practices, it would have been 15-19 parts per million on nitrates.”
Field tile routes though a woodchip denitrification bioreactor before being released on the other side. While in the bioreactor bacteria feast on the carbon in the woodchips and use up nitrates as part of their respiratory process.
He unabashedly espouses cover crops and moving away from Fall fertilizer applications to address his nitrogen footprint. The strategy of spreading out fertilizer applications proved to be especially smart in such a wet year says Smith who put 100 lbs. of anhydrous on in early spring and ended June by side dressing 50 lbs of urea.
Spacing the timing of fertilizer applications, cover crops and a bioreactor are a potent combination to deliver cleaner water, Smith said.
You can get more information online at the Midwest Cover Crops Council which offers state specific information and has a cover crop selector tool with links to more information or go here to learn more about Woodchip Bioreactors.
