Play the latest episode:


podcast.jpg

Brought to you by:

“I don't call what we do regenerative, I call it reductionist. We don't have cattle, so I don't think we can be truly regenerative, but we can reduce the harm that we do to the ground. That's ultimately every decision we make. I want to lessen the negatives that I do to the soil.”

— Alex Frasier, Grower & Agronomist, Faulkton, S.D.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by GS3 Quality Seed, listen to a conversation with Faulkton, S.D., grower Alex Frasier, as he discusses his unique practice of interseeding a cover crop mix into soybeans and how it has helped him save on fertilizer, fuel and other costs.

 Related Content

audible.jpg
pandora.jpg
Spotify
Subscribe to TuneIn
 

The Cover Crop Strategies podcast series is brought to you by GS3 Quality Seed.

Trying to improve your water infiltration? Reduce erosion?  Or attract pollinators? How about increase your organic matter? At GS3 Quality Seed, we produce and market cover crops that will help you address your soil health concerns. With knowledgeable dealers located throughout the United States, we offer a wide array of experience and support. Visit our website to find a dealer near you. 

More from this series

 

Full Transcript

Mackane Vogel:

Welcome to The Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, brought to you by Montag Manufacturing. I'm Mackane Vogel, associate editor at Cover Crop Strategies. In this episode, listen to a conversation with Etienne Sutton, a PhD candidate at University of Michigan, studying in the Soil and Agroecosystems lab. She talks about her research on what factors affect cover crop biomass levels and how to improve cover crop performance overall. It's now my pleasure to welcome on to the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, Etienne Sutton. We're going to be talking about cover crop biomass, how to increase it, how to quantify it, a lot of other questions around it. So I'll start this interview the same way I like to start all my interviews, which is just asking you to kind of introduce yourself to our listeners, and tell us a little bit about how you first got into the world of agriculture, however long ago that may be now.

Etienne Sutton:

Absolutely, yeah. Thank you for having me. So I'll just provide some context. I'm currently wrapping up my PhD at the University of Michigan, which isn't typically thought of as an agriculture school. But my training is actually in ecology, and I came to the world of agriculture through thinking about how we can use biological processes and interactions to make our food system more sustainable, so things like integrating legumes into crop rotations to sort of increase the solar-powered source of nitrogen, thinking about interactions between pests and crops and natural enemies, all of these really interesting ecologically based topics that we can apply to our food system.

Mackane Vogel:

All right. And as I mentioned at the beginning, he research that we're going to be talking about today is about cover crop biomass. So do you want to tell everyone a little bit about kind of the research you're done related to that and I guess where that's at today as well.

Etienne Sutton:

Absolutely. So a lot of my research so far has focused on cover crops sort of as this easy entry point to adding diversity onto farms. And so what I've been focusing on over the past few years is thinking about: How, when farmers are using cover crops, how can we get the most bang for our buck out of them in terms of environmental benefits, but then also from an economic standpoint? And so one of the things we know from previous research is that the benefits that we derive from cover crops is directly linked to the amount of biomass. So the more growth you get, the more benefits. The cover crops are going to be suppressing more weeds. They'll be recycling more of those soil nutrients.

And with legumes, the more legume biomass you have, the more nitrogen they're taking out of the atmosphere and putting into your farming system. So that was sort of the starting point for this Cover Crop Citizen Science Project that's become pretty popular at this point. And so the goal of that study is really just to look at variation in cover crop biomass across lots of different fields in the Great Lakes Region, and then figure out what is driving that variation with the ultimate goal being to produce management recommendations for how to improve cover crop performance.

Mackane Vogel:

And so these are on farm trials that you guys have been doing. Right? And so I guess talk a little bit about the different locations that you guys have been in. And then I'm also curious, and I'm sure our listeners are too, about some of the different tillage systems going on, and I guess just the overall kind of methodology for it.

Etienne Sutton:

Sure. So in this particular study, we're going sort of a purely observational approach. So it's not a typical field experiment where we say, "We have these specific cover crop treatments that we want you to try out on your farm." We're actually just looking at what farmers are already doing across the region. What does cover crop performance already look like based on these different types of management systems and practices? And so we had farms, most of them were rail crop farms, but we also had a few vegetable crop production systems in there. We had a wide range of soil textures includes. Tillage ranged all the way from conventional to no-till for the past three decades. People had different types of crop rotations, so we really tried to get a representative look at who is using cover crops and how they're using them.

Mackane Vogel:

And then remind me too, when this first started, it's been a couple of years now since it began. Right?

Etienne Sutton:

Yes. It's been a few years. So this was sort of a brainchild of mine back when I first started grad school. So in, I think it was about 2020, we started sort of developing the protocol that we ended up using to quantify cover crop biomass on these farms. So we just did that locally, partnering with folks to see if we can use really easy things, basically plant height measurements and ground cover photos to estimate cover crop biomass. And then from there, we confirmed that it does indeed work. And so we deployed that protocol across six different states, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, starting in, it was fall of 2021. And so those folks ended up measuring biomass in spring of 2022 on their farms for their cover crops. And then we repeated it again the following year, and will be continuing the project in the next couple of years as well. But we're taking a little hiatus at the moment just while I finish my degree.

Mackane Vogel:

Understandable. Sounds good. So I guess let's talk a little bit more about ... You mentioned all these different types of soils and tillage practices. What are some of the patterns that you guys were able to see throughout that in terms of biomass?

Etienne Sutton:

Sure. So we honestly didn't see that there was a really strong relationship between tillage practices and cover crop biomass. But soil texture and other indicators of soil health did end up mattering quite a lot, especially for cereal rye, so that was one of the main cover crops that people were growing. The most important thing of course was just growing degree days for increase rye biomass. But we did see that rye biomass was actually significantly higher on fields with, let's see, it was clay loam, silt loam, and loam soils, so those really nice soil textures that unfortunately not everyone is able to work. But if you have soil textures other than those three, like if you just have sand, sandy loam clay, we still think it's very much doable to increase your cereal rye biomass. I think those folks just need to be a little bit more strategic in terms of making sure they maximize that rye growing season because they don't have necessarily the optimal soil texture.

Mackane Vogel:

So would you say ideally planting earlier? I guess what are some of the other ways that people could increase their biomass?

Etienne Sutton:

Yeah. I would absolutely say planting earlier as much as possible is great, and then also planting grain in the spring seems to be a really big one because a lot of these over winter and cover crops put on a lot of their biomass in the spring when it starts warming up. But I think that's something we need more research on, is thinking about: How, especially in more northern climates, how do we make the most out of these short cover crop growing windows?

Mackane Vogel:

Did you see any patterns in terms of the cash crops being grown? I know you mentioned a lot of this was rail cropping. But was there any major difference in terms of corn growers, or soybeans, or other things that you guys saw there?

Etienne Sutton:

Yeah. So we did ask people about what crop they grew immediately prior to the cover crop. And we found this really beautiful synergy between sort of rotations that were more diverse in terms of their cash crops also producing higher biomass cover crops. And those cover crops were these really beautiful diverse mixtures. And that's mainly due to, as you would expect, these small grains and these more diversified rotations. They have a really long cover crop growing window. And when you're able to plant earlier after small grain, so in August, September, as opposed to much later in the fall after corn or soy, people had way more species to choose from. And so that in part just having a more diverse group of cover crops species growing led to more biomass overall. So yeah, I do really want to emphasize that those diverse cover crop mixtures actually produce twice as much biomass and contain twice as much nitrogen as the cereal rye cover crops.

Mackane Vogel:

We'll come back to the discussion in a moment. But first, I'd like to thank our sponsor, Montage Manufacturing, for supporting today's podcast. Montag precision metering equipment is helping producers achieve their yield goals while saving on seed and input costs. For establishing cover crops, Montag's family of seed platform equipment adapts to a variety of major brand delivery systems that will conserve seed and nutrients along with soil and water. Explore new options for your production and conservation goals with your Montag dealer. Visit montagmsg.com or call Montag at 712-517-2775. And now let's get back to the discussion with Etienne Sutton.

Obviously, drought has been a hot topic for a lot of our readers recently. And there's some concerns about it going into this year's growing season, as there always is. Were you guys able to see much going on in terms of biomass's relationship to lots of moisture versus some of the dryer climates.

Etienne Sutton:

Yeah. That is an excellent question. And I do think that climate played a really big role in some of the results that we saw, including what I touched on before with the cereal rye. Those soil textures that performed better are typically the ones that are better at retaining water. So if we do have droughts that carry into the cover crop season or into the spring, that could definitely play a role. But then I'll also mention that for those cover crop mixtures, one of the really interesting findings is that mixtures with at least five or more over wintering species performs the best overall out of all the cover crops in the study. And we think that's because having more species growing really increases the chances that at least a few species will do well under a given set of growing conditions. So whether you get a drought in the fall or really heavy rainfall in the spring, it seems like that diversity is key to making sure that at least some of your cover crop species pop up and produce a lot of biomass.

Mackane Vogel:

That makes sense. Yeah, that's really interesting. I also want to go back to what we talked about at the beginning with just kind of quantifying biomass. What does that look like physically? Are you guys taking soil samples and then looking at that in the lab? Or what does actually look like for you guys?

Etienne Sutton:

Yeah. So it depends on the study in our case. So with this citizen science study where we partnered with a whole bunch of farmers across the region, in order to collect that much data, we needed a really quick and easy protocol that farmers actually went out and did themselves. And so that involved, right before termination, they would head out to their cover crop field. They would take a few height measurements, and then basically just ground cover photos of their cover crops. And then we use that to calculate the percent cover that their cover crop is providing, multiply that by the height measurements.

And then we have these, they're called validation relationships, where we know that multiplying percent cover times height corresponds really nicely with cover crop biomass that we would traditionally measure with a Quadra out in a field with scissors clipping all of the cover crop biomass. So it's this really nice way to be able to collect lots of data in a short period of time. But in other cases, we definitely do more intensive sampling. If it's an on farm experiment on only seven farms in one county, we'll go out and definitely collect biomass. We'll collect soil samples and look at sort of more of those mechanistic relationships. What exactly is driving what?

Mackane Vogel:

Nice. That's super interesting. So I also want to talk a little bit more, you mentioned pests. Are there certain pests that are known for reducing biomass? Or are there other good organisms that increase biomass? Were you guys looking at that at all?

Etienne Sutton:

So we did not ask specifically about that when we did the study. We had gotten feedback from a number of folks though who are interested in learning more about that. And so we're considering adding questions to that management survey that we used to sort of better understand relationships between management and cover crop outcomes. So we've had folks comment on things like slugs, miscellaneous things around pollinators, those types of things, so it's something we would consider looking at more closely in the future.

Mackane Vogel:

For sure, yeah. A lot of our listeners are often complaining about slugs and snail pressure. And we actually had a researcher on this podcast a few weeks ago who has been studying different ways to capture slugs and snails, and has found that bread dough and actually beer in certain cases has been really effective in attracting slugs, which I thought was super interesting.

Etienne Sutton:

That is really interesting. Huh?

Mackane Vogel:

Yeah. So I guess I'll let you comment. Is there anything else that you think is really important from this study that we haven't touched on yet that you want to kind of put out there?

Etienne Sutton:

Yeah. So I would say one of the other most important things we learned from the study is sort of, it's another synergy when you're stacking regenerative practices. So I already mentioned that these diversified crop rotations lead to more diverse cover crops that then produce more biomass. But we also saw that systems that had a history of organic amendment applications, so compost and manure, were more likely to have higher cover crop biomass. So again, it's this really nice positive effect of sort of stacking these ecologically based practices. And we think the reason soil amendments in particular stand out is because they're so important for adding organic matter to the soil, so they're really improving soil health, improving nutrient cycling, water infiltration and retention, and that feeds back into more cover crop biomass. So it's this positive feedback loop where sustainable practices are sort of producing stronger effects together than they would on their own alone.

Mackane Vogel:

Okay, yeah. That's super interesting too. I didn't even think about. So grazing then I guess would be another thing, or maybe that would help increase some biomass.

Etienne Sutton:

Yeah. We did ask about grazing in the survey, and we didn't have many folks at all who had grazed their cover crops, but I would be really interested to see if there are any patterns that come up in future years if we can get more folks to participate who are sort of integrating grazing into their cover crop system.

Mackane Vogel:

So then last thing we'll close on is just you mentioned that it's kind of on hiatus right now. When might you guys be looking for more [inaudible 00:16:54] to get involved in this?

Etienne Sutton:

Yeah. So we are going to start sort of revamping the project in the fall of this year. So we'll be looking to get feedback from folks about how to sort of update the management survey, like if there were things that maybe we missed in previous years that we should add to it. And then, right around the end of this year, we'll start putting out calls for participation so folks can register to include their cover crop field. And at that point, we'd send out the management survey for folks to complete. And then in the spring, they would do the field assessment that the piece I mentioned, where they'd collect the height measurements and ground cover photos. And I will say, in return for participating, we've always been really diligent about giving data back to farmers, so we do personalized reports with data in terms of what biomass looks like on their farm compared to the rest of the farms in the study, estimates of the nitrogen content in their cover crops, things like that.

Mackane Vogel:

So that's a really valuable tool. Well, we will be sure to, if you're listening and this sounds interesting to you, we'll be sure to keep you all updated on when this is getting back up and running and how you can get involved. So thanks again, Etienne, for joining today.

Etienne Sutton:

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

Mackane Vogel:

That's it for this episode of The Cover Crop Strategies Podcast. Thanks to Etienne Sutton for that great discussion. The full transcript of this episode, as well as our archive of previous podcast episodes, are available at covercropstrategies.com/podcasts. Many thanks to our sponsor, Montag Manufacturing, for helping to make this Cover Crop Podcast series possible. From all of us here at Cover Crop Strategies, I'm Mackane Vogel. Thanks for listening and have a great day.