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Public joins farmers to watch Illinois cover crop application
 


By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

MCLEAN, Ill. — A couple dozen central Illinois farmers and a smattering of curious onlookers watched an aerial cover crop seed mix application on Sept. 8 at Sugar Grove Nature Center in McLean.
A soybean field bordering the sprawling Sugar Grove Nature Center served as the site for the fly-on.
This allowed park visitors without a direct connection with agriculture to learn about efforts by producers to sustain the environment through cover crops, said Caroline Wade, nutrient watershed manager for the Illinois Council on Best Management Practices (CBMP) from the Illinois Corn Growers Assoc.
“There is a public education component. Past CBMP cover crop presentations have been farmer-specific, but with the nature center as our site, we wanted to bring in some people without an ag background and show them the new revival in cover crops – and why they are important,” said Wade.
“It was a great opportunity for that audience to interact with the farmers and see what our farmers are doing to be proactive.”
The event featured input from some of the state’s leading proponents of cover crops, including speakers representing CBMP, academia and conservation.
Mike Plumer, CBMP coordinator, and Pete Fandel, associate professor in agriculture for Illinois Central College, explained how cover crops can help manage nitrogen and improve soil health.
The pair were also on hand to offer information and one-on-one advice to farmers about the costs, drawbacks and procedures for implementing cover crops on their farms.
Fandel spent 18 years as a crop educator for the U of I. He also conducts research on cover crops at his family farm in central Illinois. Plumer has extolled conservation tillage systems for 37 years and specialized in cover crops for more than 30. In addition, he serves as a consultant conducting programming and research in cover crops, conservation and watershed water quality issues.
Joe Curless, of Curless Flying Service in Astoria, spoke to those assembled on the edge of a privately-owned crop field as oats, purple turnips and tillage radish were seeded over yellowing soybean plants in a field located near the nature center.
“Oats are fairly simple in terms of a cover crop, mainly because you don’t have to deal with them in the spring. They will germinate along with the purple-top turnips and radishes, and the oats will die in this geography, typically at the beginning of December once we get a hard freeze. So will the turnips,” Curless explained.
“The turnips and the oats are typically used in livestock production. This will extend the foraging time for livestock producers. The tillage radishes help create biomass on the landscape.”
Curless usually suggests starting with oats as a cover crop. He can also advise farmers how to manage more troublesome cover blends like cereal rye, forage radish and daikon turnips, as well as crimson clover and ryegrass.
For the public fly-on, he ordered a mix of 48 pounds (1.5 bushels) oats, 2 pounds purple-top turnips and 5 pounds tillage radish.
Figuring oats at $12 per bushel, purple-top turnips at $2.50 a pound, tillage radish at $3.20 a pound and aerial application fees at $12.50 per acre and using typical seeding rates, Curless concluded the total cost for the crop blend came to around $39 per acre, and total cost was $51.50 per acre.
The total cost to the farmer for the applied 20-acre area comes to $1,030, using the prices provided by Curless.
A pilot in a bright yellow crop duster used GPS technology to “hit” some 20 acres of the field in 8-10 passes. Passing just 25-35 feet over the heads of some of the bolder spectators ringing the field, the twin-engine plane hit speeds of 140-145 mph while dropping its payload softly onto the yellowing leaves of the soybean plants. The seeds then slipped to the soil beneath the plant canopy.
Paige Buck-Mitchell from the Illinois USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service also attended the fly-on to provide further information on the environmental benefits of cover crops, including soil health.
“Healthy soil is able to be a lot more resilient,” she said. “The benefits of soil health include reduced flooding, recycled organic waste, increased soil carbon, energy savings, safer water and decreased nutrient loss. There is a long laundry list of benefits to be gained by increasing soil health.”
Illinois CBMP circulated materials on establishing and managing cover crops during the event. Visit the website at www.illinoiscbmp.org for more information.
9/19/2014