Rye is the Most Popular Cover Crop in Wisconsin

www.midwestfarmreport.com

Have you thought about using rye in your cropping operation? There’s certainly a lot of options when it comes to terminating the crop, the crops you’re following it with, and if you want to use rye as a cover or a forage.

Luckily, there’s folks right here in Wisconsin with some of the answers. UW-Madison Division of Extension Outreach Specialist Kevin Shelley focuses on south central Wisconsin in the Nutrient and Pest Management Program. And his colleagues say Shelley has been working with cover crops before cover crops were cool. Shelley says according to a survey done in

2017, about 25 percent of corn silage acres were planted to a cover crop after harvest. A vast majority of those acres are rye. Since Wisconsin is approaching a million acres of corn silage, so that would equate to about 200,000 acres of rye.

“It’s growing every year,” he says. “It really is a practice that helps farmers to meet conservation objectives. It helps them to meet the tolerable erosion loss requirements for a crop rotation… if they’re doing a nutrient management plan. It also helps the phosphorus index score.” Shelley says rye is the most popular cover crop in Wisconsin.

“It’s really well-suited to overwintering,” he says. “It’s very cold hardy. It will germinate and establish and then grow quickly… in the spring.”

And rye is not limited to following corn silage. Shelley notes interest is growing to follow soybeans or full-season corn with rye. He notes it is difficult to get fall growth when rye is planted so late.

There’s also interest to let rye stay on toward June on no-till operations, and terminate the rye chemically after planting. He says by keeping rye on until after planting, it provides cover during the period of high rainfall. The caveat is that it isn’t a researchproven practice.

“We’re kind of in the process of learning about that here at the UW and collecting a little bit more data on what the economics of that really are,” he says. “But there’s a segment of the industry that has a lot of interest and seems to be having some amount of success with it.”