A fall-planted cereal rye, wheat, or triticale cover crop can have both positive and negative impacts, for example by tying up nitrogen, reducing soil moisture prior to planting, increasing insect pressure, reducing weed pressure, reducing soil erosion and allelopathy. These tips from the University of Nebraska will share tradeoffs to help you better assess cover crop termination timing for your operation and risk level. 

Cover crops are used to address multiple resource concerns and can provide a wide range of conservation benefits including reduced soil erosion, scavenged residual soil nitrogen, weed suppression, and supplemental livestock forage. The carbon to nitrogen (C:N) ratio of the cover crop determines the durability of the cover crop residue.

While high nitrogen fertilizer prices up until recently have resulted from responses to the Covid pandemic, general price inflation, and policies in Europe to move away from fossil fuels, the Ukraine-Russia conflict will likely intensify nitrogen price and supply concerns, say researchers at the University of Illinois.

The Wetlands Initiative (TWI), Chicago, and Ducks Unlimited (DU), Memphis, Tennessee, have combined resources to help Illinois farmers install ‘Smart Wetlands’ to combat the Gulf of Mexico’s hypoxia zone – a ‘dead zone’ of oxygen-depleted water covering more than 5,000 square miles at the Mississippi River Delta.