8 Ways Cover Crops Pay

Think about the land you drive by that's idle and not being farmed.  What do you see?  Weeds usually.

"Mother Nature keeps the ground covered, and a living root in the soil, for nine to ten months out of the year.  Then we came along and started doing tillage to grow row crops.  By growing corn or soybeans, we keep a living plant on the soil surface just five months or so a year," says Paul Jasa, engineer in biological agriculture systems at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in a recent interview with Agriculture.com.

Why Plant Cover Crops?

Jasa, who studied cover crop and no-till systems for more than two decades, farmers need to understand why they want to grow cover crops.

There are numerous reasons:

1. Erosion control
2. Nutrient capture/recycle
3. Improved soil health
4. Water management
5. Biodiversity
6. Nitrogen fixation
7. Reduced compaction
8. Weed supression

The Clock is Ticking on Cover Crops

Harvest looks like it may be coming later this year than normal.  This poses a serious problem of when to plant cover crops into corn.  Most cover crops need five to six weeks of growth to be able to withstand the winter hardiness.

Cereal rye can be planted later than most.  It can still grow at 34 degrees F.

The question is when is the right time to aerial supply serial rye to a corn field.  If you apply too soon when the corn is still green you may not get the seed to the ground and the sun may not reach through the crop canopy.  On the other hand, if you wait to close to harvest, you may not give enough time for growth before winter.  The time to look for is when the sunlight is hitting the soil roughly 50% of the time.

Wheat fields that did not have a crop after harvest have much more flexibility to plant cover crops now.  Your options are wide open.  The Midwest Cover Crop Council has excellent information to help you with cover crop selection.  Just go to their Cover Crop Decision Tool to find more info.

Agriculture.com has found the following chart also gives some good information about when to plant cover crops.  As you can see we are in the prime time as to when to plant.

Ryan Moore is the cove crops specialist with Becks who came up with this chart.  You may email him rmoore@beckshybrids.com, contact your local dealer or seed adviser for more information.

Automated Soil Sampling

The detail is in the dirt.  As any practicing farmer knows, you must understand the land you're working on to get the greatest yield.  

The way most do that is buy hiring cheap labor to go into the field and retrieve soil samples by shovel.  Problem with that is, you often don't get good soil samples.  The workers are often more interested in quantity not quality.

Allen Baucom, a North Carolina farmer, said in a recent interview with Agriculture.com, "That probably wasn't smart, because the sample is too important to trust just anyone."

That's why he custom-engineered the Falcon - an automated soil-sampling system.

"The premise was to develop a system for taking quality soil samples and doing it efficiently and effectively.  The Falcon takes soil sampling from prehistoric to the future.  Gone are the days of time consuming, labor intensive, inconsistent, and tedious sample collection." says Baucom.  "Falcon technology delivers better samples and better analysis to make smarter input decisions."

Weighing 2,200 pounds, at the heart is a five foot diameter stainless steel drum.  Once lowered, a probe takes a sample every fifteen feet at a depth determined by the length of the probe, which can range from from four to twelve inches.

When the sample is collected, the drum is raised and a twelve volt motor takes over, which continues to rotate it, mixing the soil.  "This gives a good homogeneous sample of the area being probed," said Baucom.

A funnel then lowers into the drum, and the sample flows into an individual container.  As the funnel returns to its original position, the tray rotates itself to ready for the next sample.

"All of this is done without stopping," he notes.  "It's completely on the fly."

The tray holds twelve samples before it has to be replaced.  "On average, the system gathers twelve samples every forty minutes.  When the tray is full, you go to the back of the machine and grave another tray to take further samples," he explains.

The component on the back holds twelve trays.  "In total the system can hold one hundred and fifty six samples, which includes the tray collecting," he said.

A limited number of systems will be available at the end of September.  Base price is expected to be less than $50,000.

Identifying Good Cropland

How To Identify Good Cropland

You've seen me write about how we are so good at identifying good cropland.  As always the most important and trustworthy identifier is the local farmer.  Without local knowledge we really would be just guessing.  But how does this all get started?  We have ways of our own to identify what is good cropland and bad.  We use a database that allows us to see exactly what type of soil is located on a property.  For example.

First we identify the land boundaries and fields.  This is example is pretty basic land.  Nothing much to it.  Ideal farmland.  Our next step is identifying the soils.

From here we can tell if this is worth passing off to have a farmer check it out.  Things that would make this look good is that it's 100% tillable based of the soil classes.  The class we see here are type 2 and 3.  The rating system goes from 1 being the best to 7 being the worst.  This also tells us what type of soil it is, how many acres are each field and percentage each field takes up of the total.  Let's see another example.  This time one that has recreation land on it.

This is an excellent example of good recreation land and farmland.  We often refer to this as mixed.  In the upper left hand corner you see nothing but timber and there's no reason to change it.  That is a poor soil class and not conducive to growing crops.  But the land that is tilled or tillable is an excellent soil class.  This property should bring in wonderful revenue.  Now the next one deals with cropland that could become development land.

What would make this one interesting is that it's surrounded by homes thus making it a prime residential development ground.  Development ground goes for much more than cropland or recreation land does.  The beauty of this one is the soil classes are excellent so while you wait for someone to offer you development prices you should be able to make an excellent income off of this.  

Finally, we take a look at what's called bottom ground.  Bottom ground is considered land on or next to a river or creek.  This is generally the holy grail of farmland.  The reason is it usually has deep soil and almost never runs dry even during a drought.  So let's take a look at one.

What we see here is close to as perfect as you will get outside Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.  All the soil classes are type 2 soils.  This should bring a high revenue of crops.  Now look at the map showing the boundaries.  See the red shaded areas?  That signifies a flood zone.  This is something to consider.  For the last three or four of years the United States Midwest has been in a drought.  So wet land like this along a creek are very attractive.  However, should a wet summer come along those areas shaded in red may flood.

Bottom land is fantastic but it's something you shouldn't only focus in on.  You need this on top of regular, dry farmland so to speak.  Consider this diversifying you cropland portfolio.  That way you should be cover irregardless of what mother nature throws our way.

These are just some of the hundreds of properties we at Rural KC keep our eye on.  We do have a new letter that would keep you up to date on all the new land that comes on to the market as well as an updated sheet on the farmland we believe is the best available.  If you are interested in receiving this new letter let us know by emailing info@ruralkc.com.