Cover Crops Help Farmer Transition from Days as a ‘Bouncer’

Craig Wilkerson remembers all too well his days as a “bouncer” that led to him seeking cover – as in cover crops.

“I bounced across ditches all my younger days working on the family farm,” the Braymer farmer says. “I despise ditches.”

It was that dislike of farming rough fields and an awareness of the erosion that was taking place in the crop fields that convinced Wilkerson to try no-till farming in 1989 on a highly erodible piece of ground in Ray County. It was an attempt, Wilkerson says, that was not very successful.

“We had lots of rain that year and it was before Roundup was available, and the weeds never died,” Wilkerson said. “The landowner said ‘If you’re going to do new-fangled farming, I’m going to find somebody else to farm the place.’”

Wilkerson ventured back into no-till in 1992 with some soybean acres, and added no-till corn acres in 1998. By then he had learned more about how to successfully no-till, but he still faced obstacles, albeit obstacles of a different kind.

“My granddad plowed everything, so I was fighting my granddad who kept telling me you had to plow. Then my dad took over and he thought we needed to disk and field cultivate everything. So I was trapped by two generations of ideas about how farming was supposed to be done,” he said.

The fourth-generation farmer of the 5-9 percent slopes in northwestern Missouri says his years of no-tilling have convinced him of its benefits, both economically and from a natural resources standpoint.

“In my opinion, it takes three years (of no-tilling) for the soil structure to come around and to get the compaction out,” Wilkerson said. “The first year, yields might be reduced. But for every year after the first one, the gap narrows and then the yields exceed what you get with conventional tillage.”

But farmers would be wise to go beyond just no-tilling, Wilkerson said.

“Adding cover crops to corn and beans is phenomenal. In soybeans it is common to see a 10 bushel advantage, and I have noticed in certain situations a 20-to-30-bushel gain with cover crops.”

Healthy soil from a farm in Missouri.Wilkerson said he learned the real benefits of cover crops a bit by accident. He had planted cover crops as a conservation measure on newly constructed terraces. After the area received five inches of rain in a short amount of time, he noticed that the fields on both sides of the terraces had been gutted.

“But the center piece with the cover crops had no ditches, and we made 30 bushels more there than we made from the fields on either side,” he said.

Another time, Wilkerson said he had planted a cover crop of cereal rye to use for grazing during a drought. However, there was a 12-acre field that he did not graze, so he cut the rye on those acres for seed and then put beans in behind it.

“That’s when I realized what the rye did to help the beans,” he said. “We cut 35-bushel beans off that field in a drought year!”

He now uses cover crops on about 500 acres of his cropland.

Wilkerson said he recognizes that attitudes about farming are difficult to change, but he feels compelled to try to share his knowledge with others. He hosts cover crop tours on his farm in association with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and he has provided NRCS with 10 acres to study three different cover crop mixtures.

Wilkerson said he strongly believes in no-till and cover crops, but he also sees a need for other conservation practices, such as terraces, waterways and contour farming, on the steep slopes. In addition to farming, Wilkerson is a contractor, so he sees plenty of instances of terracing without no-till and cover crops versus utilizing the whole package.

NRCS Resource Conservationist Luke Skinner agrees that there is a need for a systems approach.

“We need to treat the real problem in our crop fields, which is a lack of stable soil structure,” Skinner said. “Without healthy soil structure there is decreased water infiltration, and the runoff removes topsoil and causes gullies.  Waterways and grass strips in concentrated flow areas help hold the soil for several years until the system of no-till, crop rotation, and cover crops re-establishes soil structure.”

Skinner said infiltration is not a problem on Wilkerson’s land.

“When we put an infiltration ring on his place (to measure the rate that rainfall soaks into the soil), the water just disappears into the soil as soon as we pour it on,” he said.  “And any water that might run off Craig’s fields during a rain is much clearer, taking with it less soil and nutrients.”

Wilkerson said improved infiltration, the benefits gained from grazing cover crops, time savings, and money saved on herbicides result in a significant economic benefit from utilizing cover crops.

“The economics are phenomenal because I’m throwing up to $50 an acre for weed control this year on fields with no cover crop while on my fields with rye I only have $12 per acre.

“I wholeheartedly feel that if people would put as much emphasis on cover crops as they do tillage, their bottom lines would improve significantly.”

And, they wouldn’t have to be “bouncers” any longer.

Photo: Left, Craig Wilkerson, Right, NRCS Resource Conservationist Luke Skinner

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