Cover crops have proven benefits for soil health. A recent Iowa Soybean Association study shows that cover crops can also reduce the input costs associated with growing crops. Read more in this article from the Environmental Defense Fund.

The growth in cover cropping may soon hit a ceiling: planting millions of acres of cover crops will require huge extensions of land to produce cover crop seed. Between 3 and 6% of the 92 million acres of cropping land currently used for corn in the U.S. may be required to produce cover crop seed for that land area. Read more in this article from Seed World.

Craig Stehly is a no-tiller who farms 12,000 acres of corn, soybeans, winter wheat and a variety of cover crops around Mitchell, S.D., with his brother, Gene. I caught up with Craig the afternoon of Wednesday, April 8.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by FR8STAR, we share a discussion between Ralph Upton Jr. of Springerton, Illinois, and ag researcher John Pike, covering their exchange which delves into research Upton had done on his farm after a 1983 drought revealed that he had a plow pan layer about 6 inches deep in his soil profile that was preventing his crops from getting needed moisture.

A common question when incorporating cover crops into a production system is, will the cover crop interfere with the performance of residual herbicides included with the burndown treatment? This article from Iowa State University Extension will discuss the fate of residual herbicides applied to crop residue and living cover crops, and how this may influence herbicide effectiveness.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA) announced a new pilot program that enables farmers in the Prairie Pothole region to receive payments for planting cover crops on their land for three to five years. The new Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) Soil Health and Income Protection Program (SHIPP) pilot is available to producers in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota.

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Mfg., we caught up with Gaston, Indiana, no-tiller Jason Mauck by phone and he shared some details about how his ever-evolving Constant Canopy system works and some of the experiments he’s been implementing to utilize the abundant manure generated by the 12,000 hogs in his operation.