PEORIA, Ill. — Hundreds of Midwest farmers and agronomists gathered for the virtual 2022 Conservation Cropping Seminar on Thursday, February 3 to hear growers relate their experiences implementing, maintaining and terminating cover crops. First, they heard from a North Carolina producer who set his state’s soybean yield record utilizing a special “home run mix” of cover crops as part of his farm’s soil management strategy. 

“From 2013 to 2020 we saw our CO2 respirations, our biological activity increased by almost 700 percent,” said Russell Hedrick, a Hickory, N.C., farmer whose regenerative soil health practices, which center around reducing fertilizer inputs, has been recognized by RFD TV, Top Producer and other agriculture media. “This will be our tenth cropping season coming up this year. The (soil) has changed from an orange or red high iron content clay into what now looks almost like chocolate cake. It really has changed our operation to maximize our resources while cutting back on inputs.”

Through cover crops and conservation tillage, a measurable increase in organic soil matter has resulted in greater moisture retention and water availability at Hedrick’s JRH Grain Farm. This, Hedrick said, has greatly reduced the amount of stress his crops experience during times of little precipitation. He credits the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service for helping him to accelerate his fledgling farm’s adoption of soil health practices. 

“Our cover crops are utilized to reduce Johnson grass, pigweed, Palmer amaranth, morning glories, cockleburs —  there were so many weeds we were spraying chemicals for that we have cut or reduced on our operation. It’s well worth the financial cost of the cover crop simply based on chemical costs alone; we have removed the chemical costs from 80 to 85 percent of our fields,” Hedrick said.

Focusing heavily on soybeans during the 2021 season, Hedrick enjoyed a state record yield of 117.1 bushels per acre. In 2017, the North Carolina producer harvested a state record corn yield. Hedrick’s cover crop of choice is a hodgepodge of varieties he calls a “home run’ mix of a half dozen or more small grains, legumes, oats and rye. 

A second generation farmer from Ogle County, Illinois, Cade Bushnell, told seminar attendees that they don’t have to “reinvent the wheel” when choosing and planting cover crops. Bushnell, 62, has been aware of the value of conservation cropping for decades thanks to his father, who installed terraces, waterways and other structures on the family’s farmland in the late 1960s. Bushnell said he utilizes cereal rye as a cover crop “almost exclusively” on his farm, which is located in north central Illinois. 

“My dad started chisel plowing in the early ‘60’s, and that conservation advocacy spilled over into me. He started no-tilling in the ‘70’s, and I came back to the farm in 1982. I took a lot of the things he started and kept working on them. My son, 26, has never run any tillage,” he said. “As for covers, rye is a very good nutrient scavenger and that’s what I rely on most. I will plant soybeans into tall rye, let the carbon-nitrogen ratio get way out of whack — maybe 80-to-1 or 100-to-1 — and that residue is very durable. I do not have a method to roll it down; it seems to not be a harvest issue.”

Bushnell cautioned against allowing high carbon-nitrogen rates to accumulate in big rye covers that will have corn planted over the top. “Treat them a little differently based on what crop you are planting behind the cover crop,” said Bushnell, who said he has experimented with many different cover crops on his Rochelle farm only to eventually discover that cereal rye performed the best. He added that he plants the cover crops every fall using the drill method.

Rick Kaesebier, a Logan County farmer, has been planting fall cover crops since 2015 and “planting green” since 2017. Contrary to local popular wisdom, Kaesebier said he has no issues resulting from grazing livestock on his cover cropped fields. Utilizing no-till, he plants as many as 15 different crop varieties on each acre every four years. This is possible considering as many as 12 of those varieties are warm and cool season cover crops.

“This gives folks plenty to talk about at the coffee shop in the mornings,” Kaesebier said, chuckling. “But instead of just having the one model crop returning to us, this gives us several chances to make things work. I think one of the nice things about cover cropping and grazing is the return on investment for us has been very nice. We’ve reduced input costs.” 

Cereal rye is the “most reliable” cover crop for Jerry Seidel’s southern Illinois farm. The Jefferson County grower said that clovers and legumes tend to drown out in low spots after heavy precipitation, while cereal rye typically remains standing. Rye grass has proven harder to manage and to terminate, he said. 

“When I started doing cover crops I realized this was going to be an incredible amount of work, and it is. But it’s worth doing,” said Seidel, who spreads cereal rye on standing corn aerially in late September. “The public is reminding us of the importance of our water quality. They’re going to force us to do something about it eventually instead of us doing it voluntarily, but until then I think covers are the best way (to conform) while still maintaining yield and profitability on the farm.”