Cover Crops

By: Dillon Blythe
Cover crops have been getting a lot of buzz in the agriculture industry for years with both skeptics and faithful believers. In Iowa, there are approximately 12-13 million acres of row crop ground and of that 600,000 acres are seeded to cover crops; about 10% of total row crop acres. This number has been growing every year with more producers integrating this practice for various reasons.

Every operation is different and various cover crops provide many different benefits such as increasing cation exchange capacity levels, reducing runoff, protecting water quality, soil health, grazing for livestock etc.More