Provide nutrients
Improve yields
Improve soil tilth
Improve soil quality
Reduce soil erosion
Provide weed and pest control
Reduce fertilizer and chemical bills
Protect water quality
Diversify farm operations

More than 2,000 years ago, agriculturists in China and Mediterranean countries sowed cover crops to improve soil productivity. Thomas Jefferson recommended that early American farmers add clovers and hairy vetch to supply nitrogen to cash crops. And in the 1990s, Ohio farmer Rich Bennett and many of his contemporaries carry on this tested tradition to save dollars and soil.

"My dad did quite a bit of cover crop work," said Ohio farmer and SARE producer grant recipient Rich Bennett. "With our sandy soil it was always something we used to save soils from wind erosion."

By reducing fertilizer applications, cover crops have also saved Bennett $2.60 an acre.

On his 600 acre corn/soybean/winter wheat farm about 150 miles southwest of Cleveland, Ohio, Bennett uses hairy vetch and rye. He returned to cover cropping when sandhills on his farm started to "dry up to nothing."

With a grain drill at 23 pounds per acre, he seeds hairy vetch into wheat stubble in early August. The vetch grows 1 foot before overwintering then regrows in April. In May, Bennett incorporates the vetch with a disk and plants his corn.

In tests with Ohio State University Extension, Bennett applied 60 pounds of nitrogen to hairy vetch strips and 150 pounds to control strips, both planted in corn. Using a soil nitrate test kit, he found no significant difference in nitrogen levels or yields between the control and vetch strips.

According to Bennett, seeding cost of hairy vetch is high, but when accounting for fertilizer costs, the control strips lose economic advantage. Bennett also saved money by saving vetch seeds on one area of him farm.

Other cover crop benefits are more difficult to calculate but still boost the bottom line.

"The vetch has really helped hold moisture over the summer in droughty soils and prevented wind and water erosion," Bennett said, adding he no longer needs water lanes in his fields due to improved soil infiltration from cover crops.

Other research does suggest legume covers, as opposed to bare soil, can deplete soil moisture in spring by 3 to 5 percent. But two weeks after a cover is killed, soil moisture typically increases.

"We’ve also seen an improvement in our soil organic matter since cover cropping," he added.

Bennett also teams hairy vetch and rye, which holds up vetch stands and controls weeds as the vetch supplies nitrogen and retains moisture. Foxtail grass was practically eliminated in no-till soybeans, in turn reducing herbicide bills.

Wet and dry springs and increased management can be challenging, but in the long term Bennett found cover crops gave him more control and higher rewards.

"This isn’t just a short term venture," he said. "To do these projects a farmer must look at a few years of results, not just year one. We’re getting plenty of benefits down the road."

Farm program legislation, dry weather, and environmental and economic concerns challenge southwest North Dakota farmers to replace traditional wheat/fallow cropping systems with alternative rotations — including cover crops.Vern Mayer, of Regent, N.D., met that challenge with ingenuity and a SARE producer grant. He grows an annual legume, field peas, in his diversified, multi-crop, no-till system, including wheat, flax, safflower, buckwheat, and canola. By interseeding peas and yellow mustard, Mayer found a creative solution to monocrop problems of the past.

"Peas are wonderful for providing nitrogen to the soil, but they don’t leave much residue for snow catch after harvest," Mayer said. "And moisture is a precious commodity here."

So Mayer solved the moisture and harvesting difficulties — while finding a host of other benefits — by partnering peas and mustard in alternative rows in late April or early May and harvesting them simultaneously.

"In the past, we mixed mustard and peas in the drill box," Mayer said. "But the two aren’t equal."

Aggressive mustard plants with large, blotchy leaves crowded out the peas. So he separated the competing crops by rows. The mustard, a "living trellis," boosts peas upright, facilitating quick and easy harvesting. Mayer uses a combine with a stripper header on the peas, leaving ample stubble to catch snow moisture.

"If you saw the peas before, you’d watch them collapse to the ground by harvest," Mayer said. "Now it’s a real phenomena when you walk through fields and see pea pods laying right on top of the mustard."

Moisture retention is 1.7 times greater than monocrop pea stubble and two times greater than chemical fallow. The peas/mustard resulted in 48 percent reduction in harvest loss compared to monocropping.

Other benefits include nitrogen for the following crop— as high as 100 pounds per acre in some areas, break in small grain disease cycles, reduced soil erosion with the crop residue, reduced cracking of field peas during harvest, and efficient use of farm dollars.

Most covers are not cash crops, but Mayer sells his peas for nearly 10 cents per pound and mustard for about 16 cents per pound.

"The economics of the mustard/pea system produces as much income as wheat," Mayer said. "You’re not giving up anything and in fact gaining many other benefits, such as moisture retention, that are difficult to put a price on."

Mayer said challenges of his management-intensive enterprise go hand-in-hand with successes.

He’s started to see perennial weeds, such as Canada thistle and field bindweed, emerge in certain fields, which he attributes to his foray into no-tilling.

"A lot of farmers have chosen not to grow peas/mustard because of the equipment requirement," said Mayer, who interseeds using a no-till drill with a grass seeder attachment. Mayer then plugs alternating holes in the seeder and drill.

He added that harvest can be a hassle because he bins peas and mustard together then separates them later, adding an extra step.

But rewards of a diversified operation outweigh obstacles in the end for Mayer, and for other producers in southwestern North Dakota.

"One of the most encouraging successes of this project is that other farmers have observed it and are doing the same thing," he said. "I see more and more pea/mustard fields. They tried it and like the results."

In Wayne County, Ill., farmer Walt Townsend took on the daunting task of breaking a tough crop of fescue to plant corn.

He had a hunch that hairy vetch could compete with the fescue, killing the stand without plowing, saving soil from erosion and alleviating allelopathic effects of fescue to corn. With the help of a SARE grant, he proved his hypothesis.

"At first the big barrier was that no one had tried this," Townsend said. "I’m now convinced hairy vetch in fescue can be the way to go if you want to go to corn."

After mowing the fescue to 8 inches in early August for weed control, Townsend later cut it and no-tilled vetch at 22 pounds per acre. The legume grew over the hardy fescue, eventually smothering it. A strip no-tilled into 8-inch stubble also did well.

Due to his Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) participation, Townsend grew the vetch until it killed the fescue, producing 12,000 pounds of high quality dry forage per acre with a 16 percent crude protein.

"We get the value of the vetch back in terms of nitrogen," he said. "I feel if I’ve got a good stand of vetch it will supply up to 80 pounds of nitrogen, then I can reduce my inputs."

Vetch also improved soil tilth for Townsend.

"The vetch-planted soil was loose, moist and showed many earthworm burrows," Townsend said. "When we plant in the spring, we feel like we have much better tilth after the vetch does its job."

Vetch doesn’t tolerate wet soils, Townsend said, so it died out at a small creek bottom. Cost of vetch seed can also be a deterrent. But benefits outweighed all costs for Townsend.

Townsend also planted vetch in wheat stubble to provide nitrogen for corn and milo.

He cut a 40-acre field of wheat then no-tilled vetch seed into the stubble. With a good stand of vetch, he no-tilled corn in May. Although cutworm threatened his crop, he harvested 84-bushel corn on an unproductive field, while neighbors reported only 90- to 100-bushel corn on better soils.

Towsend also disked wheat stubble in late July and seeded vetch with one bushel of spring oats in early September. He incorporated the vetch before planting milo in late-May.

Through his treatments and replications of sidedress nitrogen, Townsend found hairy vetch, plus 25 pounds of nitrogen, adequately supplied the milo crop.

"Without the SARE grant I would likely have gone to conventional tillage to bring some acres back into crop production," he said. "That would have increased my cost and soil erosion. I now know that I can no-till hairy vetch, grow a lot of my own nitrogen and have a better seed bed."

"I would tell producers to start small. Once you get the hang of it, then expand your acres," Birong said. " Not every practice works all the time on every farm. Each farm is unique."

For more information on producer and research grants, contact the NCR-SARE office.

ATTRA (Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas): PO Box 3657, Fayetteville AR 72702, 800-346-9140, askattra@ncatfyv.uark.edu.

Sustainable Farming Connection: Cover Crops pop-up menu.

SAREP (University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program): Cover Crop Resources Web page.

If you’d like background information on the North Central Region SARE program, contact us with the information on the backside of this newsletter.

Applications are available now by contacting the NCR-SARE office at 402-472-7081, 402-472-0280 (fax), or sare001@unlvm.unl.edu. The preproposal is also available at www.sare.org/ncrsare/grants. Preproposals are due on September 11, 1998. Applicants must reside in the North Central region.

Congratulations to all grant recipients, and we look forward to following your progress!

The evaluation team began sending surveys in January 1998 and will present a final report of their findings in November 1998. Results will be released publicly in late-fall 1998.

The Sustainable Agriculture Network is SARE’s outreach arm, offering farmer-ready information through print and electronic materials.