US: Making cover crops cost effective and profitable

Published 2024년 1월 24일

Tridge summary

Conservation agronomist Hunter Frame emphasizes the importance of cover crops for short-term economic benefits and soil health. He focuses on multispecies cover crops, particularly legumes, for their practical and economic advantages. In Virginia, farmers are incentivized to plant cover crops through a cost-share program, while in North Carolina, a software tool helps farmers select the best cover crops for their systems. This tool also aids in creating complex cover crop mixtures, understanding nitrogen availability, and assessing the economic impact of different cover crop species. Cover crops can improve soil organic carbon, which is crucial for soil health and productivity, and can also help mitigate climate change by reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and sequestering carbon.

Disclaimer:The above summary was generated by Tridge's proprietary AI model for informational purposes.

Original content

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 ...

Source: Farm Progress