Nine out of 10 farmers say they definitely or probably will stick with cover crops after the expiration of financial incentives to add the crops to their operations, said a report based on a survey of 795 farmers nationwide. Half of the participants in the National Cover Crop Survey said they had received some sort of payment for cover crops in 2022.
Incentives are key to getting some farmers started with cover crops; more than three out of four nonusers said incentive payments would be helpful, said the report. “Perhaps most exciting, 90 percent of cover crop users who had received payments in 2022 reported they either definitely or probably planned to use cover crops after the payments end,” said the survey, the first conducted in three years. Three percent of users said they would drop cover crops when incentives run out.
Rob Myers of Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education said the survey “provided a very different perspective” to arguments that incentives were the only reason to plant cover crops. Incentives are important in helping farmers transition into cover crops, he said, “but once they see the soil health improvements and other cover crop benefits, most stick with cover crop planting long after the incentives end.”
Farmers with more than 10 years of experience in cover crops reported gains of 6 percent in corn and soybean yields per acre. Improved soil health was a uniform goal of the users. More farmers than not said that they spent the same amount on herbicides with cover crops as they did before, though most of them said weed control was better with cover crops.
The 2023 survey was the first to ask about livestock and cover crops. One in four respondents said they had grazed livestock on cover crops, and most of them reported an increase in profits from the practice.
A week ago, a Purdue University report said that 45 percent of corn and soybean farmers used cover crops this year, roughly the same percentage as in 2021 and bit lower than in 2022. As in the cover crop survey, farmers said their leading motivation was to improve soil health.
Only a fraction of growers — 10 percent in the Purdue survey and 16 percent in the cover crop survey — said they had participated in a carbon market program. Cover crops are mentioned frequently as a climate mitigation practice that could generate payments for carbon sequestration.
Cover crops add a new element to farm operations, since they are planted after harvest and must be terminated when the crop season begins, and they may require purchasing seed and equipment. In the Purdue survey, the majority of farmers said they did not use or had stopped using cover crops because they were not profitable or because they lacked the resources and expertise to utilize them.
The National Cover Crop Survey report is available here.