2021 Nebraska Cover Crop and Soil Health Conference - Rebecca Clay

Deloris Pittman Author

03/24/2021 Added

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Optimizing your cover crop ROI - Rebecca Clay, Strategic Initiatives Agronomy Coordinator at Practical Farmers of Iowa

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[00:00:00.060][music].
[00:00:22.760]I knew Rebecca as Becca about four years ago.
[00:00:26.300]she spent some time in one of our summer internship programs and,
[00:00:30.820]and why I mentioned that is that was also a, we had a component to that,
[00:00:35.630]that, where we let the,
[00:00:37.790]undergrad students shadow some of the educators.
[00:00:41.510]and I forget exactly the, the two that Becca spent some time with.
[00:00:44.960]I think one of them was Gary Lesoing who we'd indicated, had,
[00:00:49.790]also participated on the planning committee. And so hopefully Becca,
[00:00:53.790]what I'm looking for today is that,
[00:00:57.650]the University of Nebraska and in particular,
[00:01:00.260]Nebraska extension had an impact on your career. So with that,
[00:01:05.210]Becca, go ahead and,
[00:01:06.980]we'll get you start to sharing your screen titled Becca's talk today is
[00:01:10.910]optimizing your cover crop ROI.
[00:01:14.000]Good afternoon. And again, thanks to Gary, Melissa,
[00:01:16.220]Darren and Michael for inviting me today. And, thanks again, Darren,
[00:01:20.600]for the introduction.
[00:01:22.580]my time at UNL was awesome and I did get to shadow Gary, as you mentioned,
[00:01:28.040]and anyway, I'll just go ahead and start. so my name's Rebecca clan,
[00:01:32.240]I'm the strategic initiatives at ground.
[00:01:35.030]so if you're not already familiar with practical farmers of Iowa,
[00:01:37.610]I'd just like to, provide a little bit of background on PFI.
[00:01:41.600]Practical farmers of Iowa as an organization was founded by farmers in
[00:01:46.390]the 1980s as an organization for farmers.
[00:01:50.360]And as some of you might recall,
[00:01:51.920]the 1980s was a bit of a turbulent time for farmers with low commodity
[00:01:56.810]prices and rising costs of production.
[00:01:59.630]And so the founders started PFI with two main goals in mind, one,
[00:02:04.850]they were hoping to provide farmers access to information and experience
[00:02:09.590]about environmentally sound, low cost and profitable farming techniques.
[00:02:14.900]And two,
[00:02:16.160]they were hoping to encourage and guide research at producing more upset
[00:02:20.570]information. Okay. It looks like you can share my,
[00:02:25.580]my video now, so hopefully you can see me. Okay.
[00:02:29.570]And now over 35 years later, we're now in 2021,
[00:02:33.590]practical farmers has expanded quite a bit,
[00:02:35.570]but some things have stayed the same.
[00:02:37.700]we are still conducting farmer led research to determine what practices are the
[00:02:41.870]most environmentally sound, still low cost and also still profitable.
[00:02:47.360]In fact,
[00:02:47.810]we're still studying some of the very same topics that Dick Thompson was
[00:02:51.170]studying in the 1980s.
[00:02:53.120]Dick Thompson was one of our founders and this topic is cover crops.
[00:02:57.800]So what I'm sharing here is a clipping from a magazine from 1984,
[00:03:02.710]that shows that the Thompsons were even researching cover crops and weed
[00:03:06.250]suppression techniques at that time.
[00:03:12.720]So here's a, just kind of a highlight here. in addition to rotations,
[00:03:16.440]the Thompson's non-chemical weed management,
[00:03:19.200]arsenal includes a finely tuned program of Ridge tillage, rotary, hoeing,
[00:03:23.430]and cultivation still under study our soybean varieties that quickly produce
[00:03:27.460]thick canopies to shade out weeds in cover crops and even weeds that make their
[00:03:31.080]own natural herbicides. So I'm happy to get to continue on the legacy of,
[00:03:35.670]working on cover crops, but let's go ahead and move to the,
[00:03:39.990]kind of the meat and potatoes of this presentation,
[00:03:42.570]which is optimizing your cover crop ROI. so since you're attending this,
[00:03:47.310]you probably are very well familiar with the myriad of benefits of cover crops
[00:03:51.930]too. so conservation water quality and much more,
[00:03:57.090]but despite these huge benefits cover crops are still costing people money.
[00:04:02.700]And so today I'm going to be sharing some thoughts and findings on two main
[00:04:06.570]topics. One is,
[00:04:08.790]how we can optimize cover crop seed in the application costs.
[00:04:12.570]And two is how can you use cover crops to control weeds and limit our
[00:04:17.220]herbicide expenses? And as Darren mentioned, I'm,
[00:04:20.830]I'm presenting alongside Chad bell who is actually not from Iowa though.
[00:04:25.110]He is a practical farmers of Iowa member he's from Illinois.
[00:04:28.950]but the idea with me presenting alongside Chad is that I'm going to be providing
[00:04:32.790]kind of a bird's eye perspective on some of these topics.
[00:04:36.210]And then Chad's going to bring us back down to earth,
[00:04:38.940]with actual experiences on how he's making,
[00:04:42.240]cover crops pay on his own farm, with, actual,
[00:04:47.010]examples, I guess. So it's not all going to be data and theoretical.
[00:04:52.800]And,
[00:04:53.430]the information that I'm presenting today is primarily data that was collected,
[00:04:57.840]from [inaudible] various, cover crop cost share programs.
[00:05:02.640]in 2020 we administered,
[00:05:04.860]seven cost-share programs throughout the Midwest.
[00:05:07.650]And so most of the data that I'm going to be presenting as coming from,
[00:05:11.310]Iowa, Illinois, and then Eastern Nebraska,
[00:05:14.700]and the farmers who participated in these costume programs,
[00:05:18.600]last fall had to fill out a survey for us where they provided their cover crop
[00:05:22.200]seed and application expenses.
[00:05:24.810]and so we'd had just shy of 500 responses to the survey.
[00:05:29.700]and yeah, let's go ahead and delve into it, how,
[00:05:34.470]what we found from our surveys. So,
[00:05:38.490]I had to wait through all of these, receipts 497 of them to be exact.
[00:05:43.050]And we found that there was, quite a bit of a range in cover seed,
[00:05:47.030]even application expenses,
[00:05:49.380]with a range from as low as about $7 an acre,
[00:05:53.580]which was somebody who was seeding cereal, or I had a pretty low rate,
[00:05:57.530]$30 an acre,
[00:05:59.540]and just combining the cover crop seed with their fall application,
[00:06:02.870]or excuse me, fall fertilizer application.
[00:06:05.540]And we also had people who were spending, you know,
[00:06:08.540]upwards of $65 an acre on, cover crop seed.
[00:06:13.790]And these people were, you know,
[00:06:15.890]using a drill using a heavier rate and maybe using a cocktail mix.
[00:06:19.610]But on average, we found that people were spending around,
[00:06:23.030]26 to $27 an acre on cover crops,
[00:06:26.900]even application. And so what I'm not going to do today is say that,
[00:06:31.790]you know, we all need to be on that $7, an acre end of the spectrum.
[00:06:36.530]We all shouldn't be spending any money on cover crops,
[00:06:39.230]but rather I'd like to just kind of,
[00:06:42.350]share some of the lessons that I learned from waiting through this data. And,
[00:06:47.750]just share some of the lessons that I've learned with conversations with farmers
[00:06:50.690]throughout the Midwest who are using cover crops to,
[00:06:54.470]meet their production goals, but still not spending too much money on,
[00:06:58.120]on those cover crops. So this is the same information,
[00:07:02.390]but it's just split out, by seeding application cost.
[00:07:05.420]Our green color over here is, the cover crop seed costs.
[00:07:10.430]And you can see that the average seed cost was $13 and 21 cents an acre.
[00:07:15.560]most people were in that seven 50 to $15 an acre range,
[00:07:19.580]but we did have some outliers on either end. And then,
[00:07:23.180]below that in the blue graph, you can see,
[00:07:25.670]the report and verified application costs.
[00:07:28.310]And so nearly everyone was spending less than $25 an acre.
[00:07:33.110]and the average was,
[00:07:34.610]closer to about 13 and a half dollars an acre on application.
[00:07:38.570]And we also have quite a few people who were even spending less than $5 an acre
[00:07:42.620]on cover crop application costs. So,
[00:07:45.650]I'll be sharing some information on that in a bit.
[00:07:50.570]at this point I'd just like to delve into,
[00:07:53.600]how we can be controlling costs on cover crop seed.
[00:07:57.710]And it seemed like the people who were doing their really good job of limiting
[00:08:01.040]their cover crop seed costs were,
[00:08:03.890]sticking to one or two of these roles.
[00:08:07.850]typically they're using just a single species, cereal, such as cereal rye,
[00:08:12.890]ode or winter wheat, and cereal rye was,
[00:08:17.090]by far and away the most common just because it's,
[00:08:20.420]very winter Hardy and it's not very expensive.
[00:08:24.650]likewise the people who are doing a really good job of limiting their cover crop
[00:08:27.740]seed expenses were typically skipping those,
[00:08:30.980]really fancy cocktail mixes.
[00:08:34.010]the people that were kind of falling on the upper end of the spectrum here,
[00:08:38.120]were often using, cover crop cocktail mixes of, you know,
[00:08:41.910]12 plus species. And, while I love diversity,
[00:08:45.770]unless we have very specific intentions for each of those species,
[00:08:48.980]it typically doesn't justify the cost of that cocktail mix.
[00:08:53.780]and now, so if we do have a reason to want to see, multi-species like,
[00:08:58.680]maybe we're going to be doing some grazing, you know, of course,
[00:09:02.880]seed Maldives, multiple species, just be intentional about which ones,
[00:09:07.290]you're seeding. And, you can also, um.
[00:09:13.320]just like.
[00:09:14.040]Stick to a couple as opposed to 12.
[00:09:16.930]Getting your bed chat here. Oops. Okay.
[00:09:21.350]another lesson that we learned from people was that you can opt for a smaller,
[00:09:24.890]seated species. So oilseed radish is,
[00:09:27.180]are really popular because of the long TAC group.
[00:09:29.870]We think that they do a good job of breaking up compaction.
[00:09:32.990]but oil seed radish is compared to other brassica, such as rapeseed.
[00:09:37.640]turnips mustard typically have a larger seed size.
[00:09:42.170]And so if we can opt for those smaller seated species, which, also have a,
[00:09:47.070]long tap group and they're going to do a good job of breaking up compaction,
[00:09:51.530]we can get the same benefit, but, less money.
[00:09:55.580]So we can see fewer pounds per acre, while keeping our costs.
[00:10:00.440]Lower.
[00:10:02.810]This year.
[00:10:03.350]I think we saw more people that were growing their own cover crop seed.
[00:10:07.580]and this is exciting because it means that they're capturing that extra profit
[00:10:11.240]margin on the seed money. Isn't going to the seed dealer or the seed producer.
[00:10:15.950]And it also opens up opportunities for summer seeded cover crops,
[00:10:20.090]such as covert,
[00:10:21.430]which can help us to fix nitrogen and just get a little bit more diversity in
[00:10:25.040]our rotation. And then just like a casual,
[00:10:29.320]observation that I also made was that,
[00:10:32.330]seed purchase purchased earlier in the season and maybe,
[00:10:36.920]July, August,
[00:10:37.940]September was typically a little bit cheaper than seed that was purchased in
[00:10:41.510]October. And I speculate that this is because,
[00:10:45.860]in October demand for cover crop seed is really high.
[00:10:48.350]And so people are able to charge a little bit more. And so, you know,
[00:10:51.710]if you're able to purchase it earlier,
[00:10:53.000]you might be able to save a dollar or so a bushel on,
[00:10:56.760]on a cereal rye or.
[00:10:58.130]Or other species like that.
[00:11:02.750]while controlling costs is good,
[00:11:04.580]sometimes it does help to pay a little bit extra depending on what your goals
[00:11:07.940]for your cover crop are.
[00:11:09.830]And so I'll go through a couple of reasons why it might make sense to pay a
[00:11:13.280]little bit more on your cover crop seed. one reason is that,
[00:11:18.200]if we're using cover crops as a weed suppressed weed suppressing
[00:11:22.850]technique, it might be beneficial to heat at a higher rate.
[00:11:26.690]Most people who are using cover crops for us, your eye for,
[00:11:31.190]so it'll help civil conservation are typically seeding at closer to a doll or
[00:11:35.900]excuse me, a bushel, an acre seeding rate.
[00:11:39.140]but if we're going to be using cover crops for weed control,
[00:11:42.200]or if we're going to be a roller crimping, it,
[00:11:44.510]we would need to see it at a higher rate,
[00:11:45.890]maybe closer to one and a half bushel to three bushel, an acre.
[00:11:51.410]Likewise, if we are going to graze our crop, or,
[00:11:55.630]use it as a forage,
[00:11:56.620]we probably want to up our seeding rate a little bit to get a little bit more
[00:12:00.670]biomass. so up our seeding rate,
[00:12:03.820]and then we can also see multiple species,
[00:12:05.740]especially if we're hoping to do fall grazing and spring grazing.
[00:12:09.640]if we're going to do fall grazing,
[00:12:10.750]we want to make sure that we have some quick to establish a species such as oats
[00:12:15.190]or a brassica,
[00:12:17.230]that is going to provide a lot of forage out there in the fall.
[00:12:20.380]And if we want to do spring grazing,
[00:12:21.730]we want to make sure that we have something that's going to overwinter.
[00:12:24.130]So ideally, maybe you can mix both of those so that you have,
[00:12:27.460]opportunities for both falling in.
[00:12:29.160]Spring grazing. Another thing.
[00:12:32.190]That I've I learned from, folks in talking to them,
[00:12:35.320]especially cattle people, is that,
[00:12:38.280]you might want to spend a little bit more on certain species if you're going to
[00:12:41.340]be using that cover crop is feed. So,
[00:12:44.970]true to Kaylee is a little bit more expensive seed than cereal arrived,
[00:12:48.570]but it does have a higher protein content than dry and makes for a really nice,
[00:12:53.550]fi feed stock, I guess. And so,
[00:12:58.290]it might be worth it to spend a little bit more on trade Akili as opposed to
[00:13:02.020]arrive. You're going to be, harvesting it for signage.
[00:13:06.450]Um.
[00:13:06.720]Another way to optimize,
[00:13:09.000]how we're spending money on cover crops is to seed our legumes early.
[00:13:12.510]If you're using legumes,
[00:13:15.150]sometimes I just have to take a big breath and,
[00:13:19.650]I sometimes I just want to bang my head against the wall. When I see,
[00:13:24.600]that legumes are being seated in, October or November,
[00:13:29.610]for legumes to, fix nitrogen,
[00:13:32.940]we need them to get closer to flowering.
[00:13:34.770]And so if we're seeding them in October or November,
[00:13:38.400]we're typically not going to get very much benefit, like seed typically does,
[00:13:42.540]tend to be a little bit more expensive. And so,
[00:13:45.930]if we're going to see legumes and we need to get them out there early so that
[00:13:48.750]they can, get closer to flowering and hopefully fix more nitrogen for us,
[00:13:53.610]and then a final way that we can, that we should be,
[00:13:56.760]optimizing how we're spending money on cover crop seed is making sure that we're
[00:14:00.390]not, importing any noxious or non-local weed seeds.
[00:14:05.520]so,
[00:14:07.260]I've heard horror stories of people who maybe found a cheap cereal,
[00:14:11.310]or I see it online, and thought, okay, $5 a bushel. That's great.
[00:14:16.050]But, they didn't ask for the seed label and they ended up getting,
[00:14:20.730]some weeds on their farm via the sea that they hadn't seen before. And so,
[00:14:25.170]we should always,
[00:14:25.980]always always ask for a seed label from whoever we're purchasing our cover crop
[00:14:30.210]seed from.
[00:14:33.990]Okay.
[00:14:34.480]I'm going to pivot away from seeds to talk a little bit more about,
[00:14:38.550]how we can be, controlling costs on cover crop seed application.
[00:14:43.680]And so our histogram here is, showing that quite a few people,
[00:14:48.090]62 actually,
[00:14:49.710]who are spending less than $5 an acre on a cover crop seed
[00:14:54.110]application, and those people who are spending less than $5 an acre,
[00:14:58.850]we're able to do that because they were a coupling application of that cover
[00:15:02.990]crop seed with other passes. The most common, that I saw was,
[00:15:07.480]mixing cover crop seed into fall fertilizer, mixes.
[00:15:12.260]And so people were just seating kind of later in the fall with a fall fertilizer
[00:15:15.920]mixes. Some co-ops didn't charge anything for this.
[00:15:18.980]I saw a cost as low as $2 an acre,
[00:15:22.880]and probably the more common cost for this was,
[00:15:25.880]closer to $4 an acre to mix your cover crop seed into that fall
[00:15:30.410]fertilizer mix to seed that way.
[00:15:34.250]I saw a couple of other people where,
[00:15:36.770]if they were already out there doing some sort of tillage,
[00:15:38.930]especially vertical tillage, in the fall, some people were,
[00:15:43.400]mounting in air seeders, such as such as a Gandy box onto that,
[00:15:47.860]vertical tillage implement and we're seeding cover crops that way.
[00:15:51.530]So just one less pass across the field.
[00:15:54.620]of course you have to purchase an air seeder, but,
[00:15:58.010]it might be worth it in the long run. If you, if you pencil it out,
[00:16:02.930]with these methods, you might be sitting a little bit later than optimal. So,
[00:16:07.460]if you have an old fertilizer buggy, you might be able to actually have,
[00:16:11.390]I talked to people who,
[00:16:12.920]will chase the combine with an old fertilizer buggy with their cover crop seed.
[00:16:16.670]So they're still kind of keeping the costs low,
[00:16:20.750]but getting a little bit more fall growth by seeding it.
[00:16:23.410]Earlier.
[00:16:27.160]Okay. and then for, cover crop seed to application,
[00:16:31.600]how we can make sure that if we're spending a little bit more,
[00:16:34.450]here's some things that we can think about.
[00:16:36.850]some people are making sure to hire the seeding done just for
[00:16:41.170]convenience. So, seating in ourselves might cost a little bit less.
[00:16:44.830]We don't necessarily have to pay ourselves, but,
[00:16:47.470]a lot of times come harvest we're in a time crunch.
[00:16:49.780]And so we might not end up getting the cover crop seat in, or we might ended up,
[00:16:53.950]ended up getting the cover crop seed and know a little, a little bit late.
[00:16:57.400]And so hiring it done by airplane or highboy means that it's one less
[00:17:02.380]thing that we have to worry about in the fall when we're already super busy
[00:17:06.040]with, with harvest.
[00:17:07.420]And we could also get a little bit of additional fall growth if we seed it
[00:17:10.380]early. And,
[00:17:13.360]the most expensive costs for typically drilling and for some people,
[00:17:16.930]if we want a really precise application and a consistent stand for maybe
[00:17:21.700]soil conservation or weed suppression,
[00:17:24.820]this higher cost might be justified. but you know,
[00:17:28.330]I encourage us to make sure that we're not getting swindled.
[00:17:31.930]there were a few people who were spending over $30 an acre on,
[00:17:36.160]getting their cover crop seed drilled.
[00:17:37.630]And it just seemed like a little bit too much. So, you know,
[00:17:41.110]aim to not spend over 25,
[00:17:43.840]$20 an acre on drilling expenses,
[00:17:46.960]unless maybe they're traveling from out of state to,
[00:17:49.920]to drill their cover crops for you. Okay.
[00:17:53.570]So I'm going to be done is anything about saving application costs.
[00:17:56.930]And now I'd just like to talk about cover crops and weeds and herbicide.
[00:18:01.940]And in my job,
[00:18:02.900]I get to do a lot of phone calls with farmers who are using cover crops.
[00:18:06.020]And I feel like one thing that I consistently hear over and over again is that,
[00:18:10.520]people are seeing less weed pressure in their cover crop fields.
[00:18:15.530]And more specifically, people have been reporting to me that,
[00:18:19.370]some of those weed species that are starting to, to develop,
[00:18:22.970]herbicide resistance, such as giant ragweed,
[00:18:26.840]waterhemp mayor's tail, are also,
[00:18:29.810]those populations are also decreasing with cover crops.
[00:18:32.420]And so I think cover crops are going to be a really important tool in our
[00:18:35.660]toolbox as we continue to see,
[00:18:39.260]decreasing efficacy of, of these herbicides with,
[00:18:44.120]with some of these, these weed species.
[00:18:48.860]and so some research has been done on this Andrew beige,
[00:18:51.200]who's going to be presenting later,
[00:18:53.030]has co-authored a couple of meta analyses on the subject.
[00:18:56.480]Gina Nichols from Iowa state has also,
[00:18:59.480]published some studies and has done a little bit of extension on this.
[00:19:02.630]So I encourage you to check out both of their, publications,
[00:19:06.890]which are going to be a little bit more for Mueller research and a bit more in
[00:19:10.730]depth, but we wanted to know, we wanted to quantify,
[00:19:15.290]there are farmers were thinking about if cover crops are,
[00:19:20.190]suppressing weeds and changing our weed population, right.
[00:19:24.950]And so we asked them,
[00:19:26.660]have you observed changes to weed pressure since you began using cover crops?
[00:19:30.260]And, 1% of respondents said yes,
[00:19:33.860]that they have observed increased weed pressure.
[00:19:37.490]And so we're not sure that this is necessarily attributable to the cover crop,
[00:19:41.180]or it could be, you know, maybe,
[00:19:44.030]some weed seed came in with cover crop seed.
[00:19:47.030]it's not necessarily attributable to the cover crop.
[00:19:50.390]I'm about 40% of people said, no, it's the same amount of weed pressure as,
[00:19:55.340]they had had before,
[00:19:57.680]before they started using cover and about 50 per 59 and crusade and
[00:20:02.450]people were saying, yes, I'm, seeding,
[00:20:05.990]seeing decreased weed pressure.
[00:20:09.440]and just because our respondents are saying that there's seeing decreased,
[00:20:14.180]we pressure doesn't mean that we take this as fact that cover crops are
[00:20:17.720]absolutely, decreasing weed pressure.
[00:20:21.650]but it is, promising to me that,
[00:20:25.310]people do think that there is some difference out there it's going to be good
[00:20:28.370]for our longterm field productivity.
[00:20:32.960]however, while, you know,
[00:20:34.880]thinking about our longterm field productivity is important to us.
[00:20:38.360]Our ag lenders are not necessarily thinking about our longterm weed pressure,
[00:20:43.280]and they want to know how the investments that we're making this year in the
[00:20:46.550]calendar are justifying themselves, you know, within 12 months.
[00:20:51.520]And so one budget factor that can be used,
[00:20:55.030]that can be influenced by cover crops is,
[00:20:58.030]changing our herbicide expenses.
[00:21:01.380]Okay.
[00:21:03.720]And we know that,
[00:21:05.070]people are out there doing this and we've heard of people doing this
[00:21:07.650]successfully. So for instance, Sam Bennett of Galvin, Iowa Northwest Iowa,
[00:21:12.570]has been using cover crops to reduce herbicide expenses in his soybean
[00:21:16.390]production. And he experimented with,
[00:21:20.370]needed randomized replicated strips of a, of a typical herbicide program,
[00:21:24.780]and then a herbicide program where he admitted,
[00:21:28.560]some residual herbicide, which had the value of about $16 an acre.
[00:21:34.140]And, Sam didn't see any differences in, soybean yield.
[00:21:38.790]And so this is really promising to us that, you know, he,
[00:21:41.640]Sam was saving about $16 an acre on, herbicide expenses.
[00:21:46.560]And so we wondered are other people in our cost share program doing this as
[00:21:49.620]well.
[00:21:51.930]And we built this into our survey and we found that yes,
[00:21:55.080]some people are reducing herbicide costs with cover crops,
[00:21:59.220]out of the 500 or so people that had that we had,
[00:22:02.610]respond to 119.
[00:22:05.490]we're able to provide data on, their cover crops,
[00:22:09.780]soybean fields versus their non cover crops, soybean fields.
[00:22:13.740]And so we asked these folks, you know, how are you changing your herbicide,
[00:22:17.370]the expenses for your herbicide product and the expenses for your herbicide
[00:22:21.240]passes and out of those 219,
[00:22:25.500]we saw that 14 people were reducing their herbicide expenses,
[00:22:30.090]and herbicide expenses in this case means both, passes and products,
[00:22:35.340]by an average of $13 and 57 cents an acre.
[00:22:39.870]So that's certainly helping to recoup some of those upfronts in application
[00:22:44.550]costs. And then we asked the same question,
[00:22:47.970]for the cover crop to versus non-covered crop corn.
[00:22:51.420]And we had about 201 people respond and out of those 201 people,
[00:22:56.190]we had 20 people who said that they were, reducing herbicide,
[00:23:01.500]passes and product with an average savings of $10 and
[00:23:06.240]51 cents an acre.
[00:23:09.510]Wow.
[00:23:11.160]Now, there is another side to this coin,
[00:23:14.700]and while we hope that most people are able to,
[00:23:17.550]reduce the amount of herbicide that they're applying, with cover crops.
[00:23:22.320]we know that, for some people,
[00:23:24.510]especially people who are brand new to cover crops,
[00:23:27.210]some people are actually applying more herbicide product or,
[00:23:31.950]doing more passes with, with their herbicides, with the cover crops.
[00:23:37.080]And, so again, out of those same numbers that I mentioned earlier,
[00:23:41.220]we saw that 19 people were applying more or excuse spending more
[00:23:46.250]on, herbicide passes and products,
[00:23:49.580]with cover crops and likewise, for corn,
[00:23:53.330]34 people were spending more money on,
[00:23:57.380]herbicide passes and products with cover crops.
[00:24:00.740]And so there's still definitely some coaching here to do. And,
[00:24:04.040]if anybody has ideas on how we can coach these people to not
[00:24:08.960]be spending additional money on a herbicide, I would love to hear it,
[00:24:12.380]but I'll go ahead and share, some of, some of our thoughts.
[00:24:17.180]so the basic principle is just to avoid,
[00:24:19.820]additional herbicide costs with cover crops,
[00:24:23.090]by using our existing herbicide program,
[00:24:26.210]we're just tweaking it slightly so that,
[00:24:29.090]it kind of accommodates terminating that cover crop.
[00:24:32.360]And so our cover crop termination does not need to be an extra pass.
[00:24:37.190]for corn, our termination can be the same path as our pre-emerge herbicide,
[00:24:42.110]and we just want to make sure that we're of course,
[00:24:44.300]getting that burned down and there, the glyphosate, if we're using zero, right,
[00:24:48.020]and for soybeans are covered,
[00:24:49.780]crop termination might be our post emerge pass,
[00:24:52.760]or some people will even terminate the cover crop right after they plant.
[00:24:57.680]but for both of these,
[00:24:58.520]we don't need to be applying additional herbicide product or passes.
[00:25:03.530]and just to avoid any hiccups with, you know,
[00:25:07.190]a zombie or dry that keeps on coming back, we just need to keep in mind,
[00:25:11.090]best practices, the same best practices that we use for,
[00:25:15.080]our herbicide programs for weed.
[00:25:17.960]and that is that we need to be spraying, our,
[00:25:21.440]our herbicide on warm sunny days when,
[00:25:24.290]nighttime temperatures aren't too cool. And,
[00:25:27.770]the rise actively growing and uptaking that herbicide product.
[00:25:31.400]otherwise we might see issues, with the cover crop,
[00:25:34.550]not terming terminating effectively,
[00:25:37.010]in which case we might have to go out and do an additional pass.
[00:25:44.380]What about reducing herbicide expenses with cover crops?
[00:25:47.080]if we want to save on herbicide expenses, what is it that we need to be doing?
[00:25:51.190]and just by looking at the data set and talking to farmers,
[00:25:54.430]it seems like the easiest way to start is,
[00:25:57.820]with cereal rye ahead of soybeans.
[00:26:00.520]just because soybeans tend to be a little bit more forgiving than,
[00:26:04.570]cover or excuse me, then corn.
[00:26:07.390]And we have to keep in mind that our weed suppression tactics really start in
[00:26:11.050]the fall and we want a consistent uniform stand. And so,
[00:26:15.910]to get that consistent uniform stand,
[00:26:18.220]methods like drilling or highway application are going to be more effective
[00:26:22.840]than, methods like broadcasting with fall fertilizer or aerial application,
[00:26:27.580]which tend to be more stock, spotty. and it seems like,
[00:26:32.380]more biomass is going to be, more competitive with weeds.
[00:26:37.450]a rule of thumb that I've heard is that we want at least 2000 pounds per acre
[00:26:42.400]of biomass out there, to suppress weeds.
[00:26:47.490]and so a higher seeding rate, earlier seeding date would help with this,
[00:26:52.740]as well as later termination. And I think this is key.
[00:26:56.730]most of our cereal rye growth happens in the spring. And so,
[00:27:01.410]the later that we can terminate the cover crop,
[00:27:03.930]the more growth we're going to get,
[00:27:05.580]and the more weed suppression we'll likely see,
[00:27:08.310]of course this is a balancing act to make sure that we're not impeding any sort
[00:27:12.060]of, cash crop growth. Oops. And then the last point here was just,
[00:27:16.740]we might have to be willing to spot spray a little bit,
[00:27:20.220]more labor intensive, but, in general, it's going to be cheaper than,
[00:27:24.840]uniformly spring an entire field.
[00:27:26.790]Okay.
[00:27:30.410]Okay. So to reiterate this, I just wanted to put this side by side,
[00:27:34.490]that we should be starting with, cereal rye ahead of soy,
[00:27:38.060]because there is higher potential for savings.
[00:27:41.540]We saw more people that were saving with soy and they're saving a higher amount.
[00:27:46.130]And then there's also a lower risk, for,
[00:27:50.480]additional expenses people typically, if they were spending more money on,
[00:27:53.890]on herbicide with cover crops, they were spending less than corn.
[00:27:58.180]and there are fewer people, so it's easier to do a cereal or I.
[00:28:02.840]Absolutely beans. Okay.
[00:28:05.630]So wrapping up here,
[00:28:06.710]here's some take home messages on optimizing your cover crop ROI.
[00:28:11.690]one, we should know exactly what we're trying to accomplish with our cover crop,
[00:28:16.250]whether it's soil conservation or water quality,
[00:28:20.270]maybe grazing maybe, weed suppression.
[00:28:23.510]And then once we know exactly what our cover crop goal is, we can,
[00:28:27.350]consider how we should optimize those seed and application,
[00:28:31.220]to best reach that goal while keeping costs low. And then finally,
[00:28:35.900]we should think about how our cover crops are influencing our broader farm
[00:28:40.280]financials. we might be able to cut herbicide costs.
[00:28:45.170]we might be able to admit a tillage pass, which is pretty expensive,
[00:28:49.430]or we might be able to save on winter feeding,
[00:28:53.450]winter livestock feed with cover crops. so in summary,
[00:28:57.410]we need to be just really intentional about how we can make cover crops pay on
[00:29:01.370]our own farm. And I'm really excited that Chad is,
[00:29:05.210]has turned on his camera. And he's about to share that up next,
[00:29:10.370]before Chad starts, they're just going to again,
[00:29:12.290]think the organizers of the event.
[00:29:14.690]and I also wanted to thank the people at PFI who helped with this project.
[00:29:19.280]Lydia English, created most of the visuals for, for this,
[00:29:24.110]presentation, Sarah Carlson advice,
[00:29:26.840]the project and Chris Wilbeck and Amy Roberts were essential
[00:29:31.490]in tracking down cover crop, receipts for me.
[00:29:36.350]And so if you've got any questions or comments or ideas beyond what I've shared,
[00:29:40.640]I'd love to hear them either via the Q and A or via the chat box.
[00:29:45.520]otherwise I've shared my email here. I'd love to, connect with you.
[00:29:50.380]the email is rebecca@practicalfarmers.org. and with that,
[00:29:55.060]thank you again. And, Chad, I'm going to stop screen sharing.
[00:29:59.530]I think you can probably.

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2021 Nebraska Cover Crop and Soil Health Conference - Rebecca Clay

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