CONSERVATION CONVERSATION
Getting
Established Cover crop farmer cultivates patience By JEANNINE OTTO AgriNews Publications
The way Paul Taylor looks at it, using cover crops is a lot like walking. “If your doctor told you to lose 50 pounds, walking is probably not the first thing they’ll tell you. You’ll need a diet plan, you might need to see a dietitian, start going to the gym three to four times a week, you’ve got this regime. But if you just walked a mile or two, every day, five days a week, for a year, you’re probably going to lose weight, have a stronger heart, lower blood pressure, lower blood sugar. But that’s not going to happen in two weeks,” Taylor said. And one of the big hurdles for many farmers doing cover crops is that they may want to
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see those results quickly, in a single crop year. “When it comes to cover crops, many people use the mindset ‘is it worth it?’ just like you would nitrogen. That means one year, one piece of ground, what was your yield increase, what did it cost you and if it didn’t pay out, it wasn’t worth it. My answer is — it’s not that simple,” Taylor said. He knows his fellow cover croppers share his enthusiasm and his belief in the effectiveness of the farming and conservation tool — along with the patience to wait. “Almost to a person, the people who have done cover cropping long term say there are a number of benefits, from improved weed control,
water infiltration, the biological health and tilth of the soil, the density of the soil, the nutrientsupplying power of the soil, the higher yield potential of the soil. It’s easier to farm, easier to work. But you can’t measure that in one year,” Taylor said. For Taylor, the reasons he started using cover crops, over a decade ago, just made sense. Over 15 years ago, he sold some of his land for a swine facility, a sow farm. As part of that agreement, Taylor can utilize the manure from the farm. The manure is applied in the spring and fall and he uses cover crops to maximize the nutrients in that manure. “Part of what has made our situation different is that
