CONSERVATION CONVERSATION
First year of cover crops is a
LEARNING EXPERIENCE By JEANNINE OTTO – AgriNews Publications
A
s vice chairman of the DeKalb County Soil and Water Conservation Board and longtime board member on the SWCD, Paul Kuhn knows the cover crop talking points. He’s heard about the benefits. “I hear it all the time and we talk about them often on the board. I’ve been to plenty of seminars on cover crops,” Kuhn said. This year, after his soft red winter wheat crop was harvested, Kuhn decided to give cover crops a try. “We’ve been looking at them for several years. Paul Kuhn, vice chairman We decided this DeKalb County Soil and Water Conservation Board year, when we took all our wheat off, we planted a nitrogen-building cover crop,” he said. Kuhn raises corn, wheat and soybeans and farms with family members and farm employees. “We sit in the corner of DeKalb, Boone and McHenry counties, close to some population centers,” he said. Like many farmers, while Kuhn understands the benefits of cover crops, but he also wants to know how the crops will impact his bottom line. “The thing I keep asking is — where does the dollar return come from for the farmer for this? We are investing a substantial amount of money. I’ve got $40 in seed costs. I’ve got another $15 an acre planting it. I’ve got expense for this and I need to see some return on it,” he said. While the argument might be that Kuhn invests more in his acres of wheat,
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corn and soybeans, for those crops, there is an immediate return on that investment and, usually, a profit per acre. “I can see the advantages from the perspective of what we need to do. We need to hold the soil in place better. Erosion control is a big deal. We need to keep that soil in place. We need to keep those nutrients in the ground. We are going to sequester some carbon in the process and we hope that helps too,” Kuhn said. What he hopes to see happen is for the cover crops to improve the soil so the crops that follow yield better. Another benefit Kuhn is interested in is seeing how much the cover crops can reduce the need for purchased nitrogen. With farm fertilizer costs skyrocketing and some fertilizers in short supply due to global supply and demand issues, that could be the profit angle of Kuhn’s cover crops. “We came up with a mix from LaCrosse Seeds in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. The mix is designed to build nitrogen for next year’s corn crop so I can put less purchased nitrogen on next year. That was the reason we planted cover crops behind the wheat,” Kuhn said. One side benefit of the learning experience for Kuhn is learning something new. He isn’t a stranger to implementing soil conservation practices on his farm. He uses no-till on some of his acres along with soil and water conservation tools like grass waterways. He installed 12 miles of new grass waterways on the farm this summer, in addition to the miles of those already in place. “I see the environmental benefits of it and I really have enjoyed watching
it grow. The mix has some nontypical crops in it — some clovers, some radishes, some oats. It’s not stuff that we normally grow and it’s going to biodiversify our soils a little bit more. I’m looking forward to seeing how it helps the corn next year,” Kuhn said. Kuhn is involved with the Precision Conservation Management program, a program of the Illinois Corn Growers Association with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. He hasn’t signed his farm up for any of the agriculture carbon credit programs. The PCM program helps farmers determine the financial sustainability and viability of various conservation practices on their own farms, using field-level farm data and analysis of that data, along with assistance from specialists who help farmers find the conservation programs and practices that can benefit their farms. Kuhn said he has questions about some of the new carbon capture programs. “I am waiting to see how the dust settles on those. We already are doing a lot of the things they want us to do. They won’t pay farmers for current practices. They only pay for improvements above and beyond those. So, it’s penalizing people who are already taking care of the soil and the environment. It’s penalizing those people and I don’t feel that’s the best way to go with these programs. So, I am in a ‘wait and see’ mode on it,” he said. Jeannine Otto can be reached at 815-4102258, or jotto@shawmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at: @AgNews_Otto.
