Cover Crop Strategies Podcast

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, Marisol Berti, Endowed Professor & Plant Sciences Graduate Program Coordinator at North Dakota State University, discusses her multi-year research on nitrogen and cover crops and attempts to answer the question — can we count the nitrogen credits of cover crops for the following cash crop?

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, listen to a presentation from the Soil Management Summit in Alexandria, Minn., that features Anna Cates, state soil health specialist at the University of Minnesota Extension, and Minnesota no-tiller Tom Pyfferoen, as they discuss how cover crops can help combat drought and what Tom has learned from his on-farm cover crop trials.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, Marshall County, Iowa no-tiller Wade Dooley shares what he learned from his informal trial of seeding a rye cover crop every month of the year. As a 6th generation farmer, Dooley also shares why he believes communication is the most important thing when transitioning a family farm from one generation to the next.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, Morgan Jennings, field crops viability coordinator with Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI), discusses PFI’s cover crop cost share program as well as her cover crop research on grazing corn residue in the spring.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, listen to Rob Myers, director of the Center for Regenerative Agriculture at the University of Missouri, as he discusses 4 alternative cover crops and how to manage each one. Myers talks about buckwheat, millet, canola and sunflowers.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, listen to Gary Zimmer giving a presentation at his farm in Spring Green, Wis. Zimmer, who many refer to as the “father of biological farming,” talks about his farmer origin story and why rye is so important in keeping his soil covered.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Go Seed, a panel of 3 farmers discuss how they use cover crops with their varying tillage practices. Jim Stute of East Troy, Wis.; Tim Recker of Arlington, Iowa; and Jacob Bolson of Hubbard, Iowa, talk about their own trial and error periods of adopting cover crops and what they’ve learned through the process.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Go Seed, listen to a presentation from the 2022 National Cover Crop Summit featuring South Dakota father-and-son farmer duo Barry and Eli Little. They explain how their 2,500 acres of cropland and pastureland have improved by incorporating covers and ruminant animals on every acre, as well as how they use rotational grazing with their cattle and the economic benefits they’ve enjoyed from implementing covers and livestock.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, brought to you by Go Seed, Oliver Peoples, president and CEO of Metabolix Yield 10 Bioscience company, discusses camelina, its benefits as a cool-season cover crop and potential incentives for farmers to grow camelina.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, brought to you by Go Seed, listen to a popular presentation from a previous National Cover Crop Summit featuring Dean Sponheim. Sponheim, a fourth-generation farmer from Osage, Iowa, who has been aerial seeding cover crops since 2012, discusses how to handle common aerial seeding challenges, recommended rate of establishment for aerial seeding, which species of cover crops do best when aerial seeded and much more.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, brought to you by Go Seed, Tyler Williams and Zach Larson, sustainable systems agronomists with Bayer, share details on a program called ForGround, which aims to assist and provide support to farmers who are adopting or expanding regenerative agriculture practices. Williams and Larson also chat about what factors they consider when providing advice to farmers in a variety of different regions.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, brought to you by Go Seed, Charlie Morrey, a multimedia agricultural journalist with Agriland in Dublin, Ireland, talks about Irish regenerative farming practices, some of the biggest struggles that farmers in Ireland and other parts of Europe face and how U.S. farmers can learn from them. Charlie also talks about her experience growing up on an arable farm on the Isle of Man.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, brought to you by the National Strip-Tillage Conference, Aries Haygood of Vidalia, Ga., talks about his unconventional path into the world of agriculture and how he first started learning about cover crops. Haygood also talks about what equipment works best for him as a grower of Georgia’s famous Vidalia Onions, which are known to have a very sweet flavor due to the low amount of sulfur in the soil in that part of Georgia.

While using herbicides to terminate cover crops is a common practice for many growers, some are looking for mechanical methods instead. In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Montag Manufacturing, Scott Healy of Hartford, S.D., joins us for a discussion about his experience using a manure dragline to terminate cover crops. Healy also discusses the difference between oats and cereal rye as a cover crop on his farm, chopping corn silage and much more.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Montag Mfg., Roy Pfaltgraff of Haxtun, Colo., talks about the unique cover crop strategies that he uses in his operation at Pfaltzgraff Farms. Roy grows 14 different crops with only 16 inches of precipitation, something he calls an arid region solution to the many challenges of cover crops.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Montag Mfg., assistant editor Mackane Vogel sits down with Jeff Gaska, who farms outside of Beaver Dam, Wis. Gaska uses almost every soil health practice in the book to build healthy soil and farm profitability. He focuses on grazing and frost seeding, but he also does fall cover cropping, no-till and interseeding. Listen to this episode to find out why Jeff thinks it’s important to incorporate not just one, but all components of the soil health holy grail.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Montag Mfg., Ryan Schmid, a research scientist and agroecologist at the Ecdysis Foundation in South Dakota, gives a preview into his upcoming presentation at the 2023 National Cover Crop Summit. His presentation features a “how-to” guide and background info on how Ryan turned tillage equipment into a roller crimper for terminating cover crops. He says if he can do it, anyone can.

No matter where or what you farm, your operation can benefit from cover crops. Planting covers improves soil biology, increases water infiltration, saves money and more. In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Montag Manufacturing, Seth Watkins of southern Iowa joins us for a discussion about the benefits of incorporating cover crops into your operation specifically as a means to stay committed to improving soil health, conserving the land and keeping our waters clean.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Montag Mfg., Brian Ward of Clemson University's Coastal Research and Education Center in Charleston, S.C., joins us for a discussion about maximizing the benefits of cover crops in vegetable and organic systems. Ward also discusses some of his research on organic watermelon growth and its relation to pollen and bees.

As 2022 comes to a close, we’re revisiting some of the most-played episodes of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE by Sound Agriculture. Listen in as we count down the top three most-played episodes of 2022, featuring insight the economic returns of grazing beef cattle on cover crops, the costs of cover crops compared to tillage and soil compaction, and reducing fertilizer use with cover crops.