Small grains cost-share program is now open

AMES, Iowa — Practical Farmers of Iowa invites farmers who are thinking of seeding small-grain crops like rye, oats, barley, triticale or wheat to apply for cost-share and technical assistance through PFI’s small grains cost-share program.

Farmers in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Wisconsin are eligible to apply for the program, which offers $20 per acre for growing a small grain with a legume cover crop, and an additional $20 per acre for reducing nitrogen on corn that follows the small grain in rotation.

Full details and an application form are available at practicalfarmers.org/ small-grains-cost-share.

Participants in the cover crop program must grow a small-grain crop that will be harvested for grain or forage in 2023 and follow it with an underseeded or summer-planted cover crop containing a legume species. Acres must also be conventional or in transition to organic (but not yet certified organic).

“With cover crop seed prices on the rise, our small grains cost-share program can help farmers save money by growing their own seed while boosting their farm’s resiliency,” says Lydia English, PFI’s field crops viability manager. “We now have cost-share for both the small-grain and corn years of your extended rotation.”

Also, farmers can now gain an additional $20 per acre for taking nitrogen credits from their legume cover crop in the corn year of their extended rotation.

To be eligible for these funds, farmers must agree to reduce nitrogen by 40 units compared to their typical rate in a two-year corn-soybean rotation, or they must apply no more than 100 units of nitrogen to corn that follows a small grain-plus-legume cover crop in rotation.

As part of this cost-share program, farmers will have a one-on-one consultation with a PFI staff agronomist to help them plan for reducing their fertilizer use.

For both cost-share programs, farmers can stack the cost-share with other publicly funded programs, but may not be able to overlap enrolled acres with Environmental Quality Incentives Program practice numbers 328 (conservation crop rotation), 340 (cover crops) or 590 (nutrient management), or with private carbon programs. Please inquire with PFI to learn more.

To check eligibility or for help getting signed up, contact Lydia English at (515) 232-5661 or lydia.english@practicalfarmers.org

This article was submitted by Practical Farmers of Iowa. v evapotranspiration. The nitrate form of nitrogen is easily leached through the soil profile where it can also be lost through drainage tile. As the crop grows and develops, it uses increasingly more water, decreasing the amount of nitrate that ends up in drain tile.

The typical design criteria for an artificial drainage system in southern Minnesota is to use a half-inch drainage coefficient, meaning that a half inch of water can be drained in 24 hours. As a general rule of thumb, nitrate will move five to six inches in silt or clay-loam soils for every inch of drainage. This means that a drainage system flowing at full capacity will remove an excess inch of water in two days, moving nitrate 6 inches lower in the soil profile.

If you monitor water flow through the drainage outlet (in addition to knowing how much excess precipitation was received), you can estimate the amount of drainage. This can also help you figure out whether significant amounts of applied nitrogen have been lost. For example, if drainage tile with a half-inch drainage coefficient is three feet deep and nitrogen was applied at a depth of six inches, after receiving five excess inches of rain, it would take approximately 10 days at full tile capacity for that nitrate to be lost to tile drainage. On average, water that is at the top of the soil profile will get to the tile by the end of the year.

The past two very dry years some parts of Minnesota experienced have led to nitrate carrying over from one growing season to the next. This is due to unused fertilizer the droughtstressed crop was unable to use; and because mineralized nitrate which accumulates after the growing season may still be present next year. Soil test data courtesy of Minnesota Valley Testing Labs shows more than 72 percent of samples in 2021 and 78 percent of samples in 2022 had 6 parts per million or more nitrate — translating to a significant nitrogen credit which can be used to reduce fertilizer application rates for the next year.

The pre-plant soil nitrate test is recommended this coming spring in areas that experienced drought where corn will follow corn, or where there is a manure application history.

To avoid significant losses, the data indicates that fall urea is no longer a recommended practice, and a nitrification inhibitor is suggested with fall anhydrous ammonia application.

Farmers are encouraged to know how conditions affect applied fertilizer as well as other factors such as crop growth and the ability to get into the field. Knowing your options and having the ability to switch to alternatives based on conditions will allow you to change management from one year to the next in order to maximize profit while minimizing the impact on the environment.

This article was submitted by Angie Peltier, University of Minnesota Extension. v