Mackane Vogel here at the Acres Eco-Ag Conference and Trade Show in Madison, Wis., and for this week’s segment we are going to toss it off to Gary Zimmer to talk a little bit about his cover crop strategies.

“You have to earn the right. And this is the dilemma. At the sustainable conference they had in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago, a thousand people showed up. All the food companies there they want all their food being regenerative and sustainably grown. There was a panel with a farmer on it. And the farmer said that’s fine. I’ll grow your cover crop but if someone’s not gonna write me a check for $53 per acre I’m not doing it. That’s what it cost him, he said, to do it. What is he missing? He doesn’t know how to make money growing a cover crop. If I grow that cover crop I have to earn the right. Now here’s my fungicides, insecticides, pesticides. I can honestly say on our farm for 25 years, we used to have dairy and now we are cash croppers, I have never seen the need for an insecticide or fungicide. Tar spot wiped out my neighbor’s corn a couple years ago, we couldn’t find any on our field. We are across the fence. I’ve never seen the need for those pesticides but if you’re a farmer and all the sudden you grow a cover crop, what do you do next year? Do I cut my nitrogen? Do I cut my chemicals? Do I get more resilience? It might take some time but they do not know because they have never been taught how to get from A to B. and that’s your struggle. That’s the struggle of agriculture that I fight all the time. How do I earn that right to feed less grain to cattle? How do I earn the right not to spend all my money on stuff that does not make my farm any better?”

Always good stuff from Gary Zimmer and there’s been lots more good content here at the conference so stay tuned in the coming weeks for lots more.

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.