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Seneca County farmers growing cover crops to protect Lake Erie

 

By DOUG GRAVES

Ohio Correspondent

 

TIFFIN, Ohio — With all the algae bloom discoveries in Lake Erie, it comes as no surprise that runoff from farms gets much of the blame.

Rather than fire back at their accusers, scores of farmers in Seneca County in the northern part of Ohio have banded together to do something about the situation. Their mission is to plant more cover crops, plants that will cover the farm ground during the winter and help prevent erosion and nutrient runoff.

This past year, an astonishing 18,000 acres of cover crops were planted in Seneca County alone. Concerned farmers like Jeff and Carla Wagner have taken such steps, thanks in part to increased funding through the federal farm bill and education from the Seneca Conservation District.

"The part that interests me the most is building the organic matter in the soil," Jeff said. "I’d like to build that up and actually make the farm better than it was when I started, and cover crops help me do that."

The Wagners grow about 700 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat and then protect the land by seeding blends of radish, Sudan grass and rye.

"When you see a green field with cover crops in the fall, it’s green because the cover crop is scavenging all the nutrients on the field, holding them there," said Beth Diesch, Seneca Conservation District education and outreach coordinator.

That means those nutrients are not making their way into streams where they can contribute to algal blooms on Lake Erie and other waterways.

Bret Margraf, a nutrient technician with Seneca Conservation District, said farmers are figuring out how to make it work for their individual farms. Margraf experimented with different cover crop varieties on his farm for several years, and today he has testing equipment on his farm as part of ongoing research to find ways to reduce nutrient runoff.

Preventing runoff is vital, as streams from nearby farms empty into the Sandusky River, which eventually makes its way into Lake Erie.

"Anyone using cover crops that thinks back to the first time they planted cover crops remembers being nervous," Margraf said. "We just want to make sure that folks new to cover crops don’t make a rash decision that could give them a bad taste for cover crops."

Most farmers in the Seneca County have gone to common cover crops such as tillage radish, cereal rye, annual ryegrass, buckwheat and barley. Most believe these plants capture and hold excess nitrogen and other nutrients to reduce runoff. Upon decay, they return nutrients to the soil to be used for the next crop.

Other Seneca County farmers lean toward nitrogen fixers, or legumes. These include peas, lentils, clover, hairy vetch or sunn hemp. These plants help convert nitrogen from the atmosphere and put it in the soil for use by crops. And these farmers aren’t shy about their use of such cover crops.

Tony Faeth has been using cover crops since the 1980s. He and his father saw that their improved soil dried quicker in the spring, allowing them to plant their grain crops earlier. Faeth uses various blends of cover crops including radish, rye, oats and winter peas.

"I feel that we may have a deed to this property, but we are just stewards of the soil," Faeth said. "I want to make the place better than when I came here. That is what we are in it for, to make the world a better place than when we came to it. It’s simple."

Dwight Clary and his wife Lisa farm 1,000 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat and also run a seed business through Center Seeds to help farmers plant cover crops. One technique the business uses is to have a crop duster drop cereal rye seed onto corn fields. Clary now seeds 7,000 acres in cereal rye cover crops for other farmers.

"If you get a farmer doing this somewhere, people start watching, and it grows from there," Clary said.

Indeed – 18,000 acres of cover crops and growing.

4/15/2015