US: Making cover crops cost effective and profitable

Deciding the best approach to cover crops on your farm is a challenge whether you are considering cover crops for the first time, or you have planted cover crops for 10 years or longer. Research backs up the benefits of cover crops, but what makes the practice difficult to adapt is finding ways to make cover crops cost effective where they contribute to the bottom line. Hunter Frame, a conservation agronomist and the Virginia Tech cotton specialist, has conducted extensive research on cover crops and stressed that the approach to cover crops must be both agronomic and practical. He drove the point home once again in a panel discussion on cover crops at the North Carolina Commodity Conference Jan. 12 at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel in Durham. Frame stresses that cover crops must produce a short-term economic benefit to row crop producers in order for more of them to adopt the practice. “If we can’t have an economic benefit going into this, they’re not going to wait five to six to ...