I appreciate Mike Baise from American Farmland Trust for sending me the document NRCS Cover Crop Termination Guidelines Non-Irrigated Cropland. The document was published June 2013 and should be very helpful to everyone using cover crops.
Learning about the benefits of planting cover crops.
I appreciate Mike Baise from American Farmland Trust for sending me the document NRCS Cover Crop Termination Guidelines Non-Irrigated Cropland. The document was published June 2013 and should be very helpful to everyone using cover crops.
Almost two years to the day I posted an article about Killing Tall Annual Ryegrass.
The problem of a wet and chilly 2011 has resurfaced an ugly head to be a wet and COLD spring of 2013. But over the past week or so temperatures have warmed into the 70’s and 80’s with cover crop annual ryegrass and winter cereal rye having grown tall in some areas of the Midwest. Producers need to kill their cover crops as soon as possible to comply with RMA regulations.
In a previous post I wrote about dormant seed in cover crop species on our home farm.
I showed how radishes were present in soybean fields and how annual ryegrass was coming up even after there was residual herbicide and burndown herbicide applied.
Now here we are in the spring and we have a few new surprises. Fall 2011 planted annual ryegrass and even fall planted winter cereal rye are now growing in the spring of 2013. These cover crops were fully terminated in the spring and summer of 2012; there was effective weed control. So dormant seed has germinated and now grown a full 15-18 months after it was seeded. So yes, cover crops can become weeds.
(But remember, cover crops also suppress weeds.)
We have the benefit of a “thin” cover crop and we did not have to pay seed cost or application cost for the second year. In our farming situation it is not a big deal. We terminated all of our cover crops and weeds with a “hot” chemical mix. It is a mix similar to what we used in our no-till fields prior to glyphosate coming on the market. However, if we were growing wheat or oats or barley for grain and straw it could be a problem. Thankfully there are now chemicals to use in cereal crops to eliminate annual ryegrass. I hear reports that Jamie Scott from northern Indiana has seen excellent results with this practice.
We have less winter annual weeds where we have the “volunteer” cover crops and I’m confident our soil health is better where we have the cover crops.
We enjoy the benefit that we have from the cover crop (even though it is a sparse stand) and we watch to make sure we do not have any cover crops coming back before harvest. The cover crops are now dead and a residual herbicide is applied. Now we wait to plant the corn and soybeans and scout for any additional dormant seed to germinate and grow. A clean harvest is important to all producers. Our goal is to use the information from our own farm to make sure that farmers understand the rewards that cover crops bring and also the risk that comes with the reward. The risk is not huge and it is manageable, but it is risk none-the-less.
Cover Crops and Crop Insurance issues seem to be heading to a collision course again this spring in much of the Midwest. In the Corn Belt wet fields have prevented planting with less than 10% of the corn planted by May 5 across the major corn producing states. In the Upper Midwest and even into Oklahoma and Arkansas 2-19″ of snow fell the first week of May. Dairy farmers are desperate for forage and up to 75% of the alfalfa in Wisconsin and Minnesota winterkilled. Many of those dairy farmers planted cover crop Winter Cereal Rye with hopes of harvesting Ryelage this spring to get some emergency feed after the devastating drought of 2012.
But the cold wet spring (coldest on record in USA since 1975) may have farmers in a pinch with RMA again despite the Special Provisions for cover crops to the common crop insurance policy for the 2013 cropping year. As of May 8, 2013 the Rye is only around 10″ tall in most of Wisconsin…certainly not ready for harvest by the May 10 RMA cut-off for harvesting and still attaining crop insurance. Even in Indiana the cover crops are ‘exploding” into head after an exceptionally slow start to spring. The fact that these fields are not full of winter annuals that are headed out like neighboring fields should be applauded…so should fields with cover crops be penalized? It appears that farmers in the Upper Midwest have to choose between feed and crop insurance. In much of the Corn Belt the fields are still plenty wet. It is interesting that in some states the fields full of weeds qualify for crop insurance…yet fields with cover crops that have seed heads (instead of weeds with seed heads) do not qualify for cover crops. Go figure.
Please check with your crop insurance agent to see what regulations apply to you.
The Risk Management Agency ruled today to change their policy on cover crop usage and cash crops that follow cover crops. In a previous post I reported some limitations that the RMA had on following cover crops (cover crops could not be headed out, could not be harvested before planting cash crop, etc…).
This good news was reported by Carrie Muehling of WJBC Radio. I will update this soon with further reaction from industry professionals.
I’d would also like to publicly thank RMA for hosting a group of us in Springfield, IL this past summer. They were willing to listen to successful farmers, agronomists, NRCS, SWCD, and industry leaders as we discussed the multiple benefits that cover crops provide. Also a special thanks to those folks that continued to “carry the cover crop message” all summer and fall – even to Washington D.C. – to tell the success stories that farmers are experiencing with cover crops.
This is a GOOD DAY for agriculture.
Here is a listing of links from USDA’s Risk Management Agency that pertain to prevented planting. I hope most of you folks never need these; but I know many of you might need them this year! Thanks to Desiree King from RMA for passing these along (and for all of here help in this matter).
Here is our Prevented Planting Fact Sheet which explains the options a producer has when they are prevented from planting (including the option to plant a cover crop): http://www.rma.usda.gov/pubs/rme/ppflood.pdf
Here are our 2011 Basic Provisions (see section 17 regarding prevented planting rules-specifically Section 17(f)(5)) which state that a cover crop may be planted on PP acreage within or prior to the late planting period, but a cover crop may not be hayed, grazed or otherwise harvested within or prior to the late planting period. http://www.rma.usda.gov/policies/2011/11-br.pdf
Finally, here is a link to our Prevented Planting Loss Adjustment Standards Handbook. Section 5 (c) has a section on cover crops and prevented planting, which explains that they may not be hayed or grazed until November 1st and may not be otherwise harvested at any time. http://www.rma.usda.gov/handbooks/25000/2011/11_25370.pdf
All of these documents are available on the RMA website (http://www.rma.usda.gov/)
Here are links that give options for what to plant for cover crops. Summer annual grasses for cover crops for prevented planting acres and Prevented Planting Row Crop Acres – Which cover crops can help?