Cover crops covering more Iowa farmland

Iowa farmers are rapidly adopting cover crops as a means to protect and improve their soil and to reduce the volume of nutrients flowing from their fields into the state's surface water.

Last year they planted a record 100,000 acres of cover crops, mostly annual rye, and they will likely more than double that this year.

“It's just kind of caught fire this year,” said Don Elsbernd, an Iowa Corn Growers Association director who farms 1,400 acres around Postville in northeast Iowa.

The state's recently introduced Nutrient Reduction Strategy – a voluntary plan to reduce by 45 percent the nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer load in Iowa waterways – “is one of the biggest drivers,” Elsbernd said.

Another big driver, following Iowa's wettest spring on record, is the ability of cover crops to protect soil from the horrendous erosion that stripped countless tons of topsoil earlier this year, said Marty Adkins, Iowa resource conservationist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Besides protecting soil from erosion and capturing nitrogen that can otherwise leach from the soil and pollute waterways, cover crops build organic matter, control weeds and improve soil health and biology, according to Sarah Carlson, cover crop research coordinator with the Practical Farmers of Iowa, a leading proponent of the practice.

“They aren't making any more land, but you can make the soil you have better, and this is a good way to do it,” Adkins said.

The accelerating interest in cover crops was illustrated this month by the speed with which Iowa farmers applied for $2.8 million in state cost-share conservation funds, said Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey.

“I didn't think we would use that all up in one year,” but the funds, allocated to help implement new nutrient reduction practices, were spoken for in less than three weeks of the announcement of their availability, Northey said.

Almost 98 percent of the available funds were requested to pay half the cost of planting 109,415 acres of cover crops, with the remainder divided among no-till, strip-till and the use of a nitrification inhibitor.

With the cost-share formula, Iowa farmers will be providing at least another $2.8 million to support the water quality improvement practices.

Northey said the response shows Iowa farmers will voluntarily adopt science-based solutions to conservation challenges.

“Long term, we need to show that the economic benefits of cover crops exceed the annual $30 to $45 per acre cost. That's the place we need to get to,” said Elsbernd, who planted 150 acres of cover crops last year and plans to seed 400 acres this year.

Early adopters of the practice already regard cover crops as an investment rather than an expense.

Washington County farmer Steve Berger, whose family has been planting rye cover crops for decades, said the plant's fibrous root system protects soil and builds organic matter, making the soil more resilient to both drought and excessive moisture – conditions that have vexed Iowa farmers in recent years..

In addition to all the recognized benefits of cover crops, Rowley area farmer Dick Sloan said he likes to see green fields for more than just the five months that corn and soybeans are growing.

Sloan planted cover crops on 125 acres in 2011, doubled his acreage in 2012 and will seed his entire 720-acre farm this year with a mix of rye, barley, oats, lentils, rape seed, winter wheat and hairy vetch.

Sloan said Iowa farmers, including himself, are in an experimental phase where they are learning how to manage cover crops and determine which ones yield the most benefits under varying conditions.

Mike Fangman, who farms in southern Buchanan County, added cover crops to his conservation practices last year, and he could hardly be more pleased with the results.

Besides increasing the organic material in his soil, the rye he drilled into crop fields last fall greatly reduced soil erosion during the wettest spring on record, he said.

“I do a lot of custom spraying, and I have seen a lot of gullies, but I didn't have any on my farms,” Fangman said.

With hundreds of thousands of “prevented planting” acres in Iowa this year, many farmers will be getting their first cover crop experience sooner than they would have liked.

“It was the best thing to do long term for the farm,” said Chris Edgington, an Iowa Corn Promotion Board member who is sewing oats and tillage radishes on the more than half of his Mitchell county farm that was too wet to plant corn and soybeans.

Iowa Farm Bureau President Craig Hill, at the organization's annual policy conference this week, praised Iowa farmers' response to the nutrient reduction strategy and urged them to do more.

“We must go beyond talking, to doing what is right for your farm and for all of Iowa's natural resources,” Hill said.