Cover Crop Economics for Forage and Soil Health | Husker Harvest Days

0:02 Crop Talk on Market Journal is supported by Nebraska soybean farmers and their checkoff.

0:08 And up next, we look for Chad Moyer. He's found some cover crops, a plot demonstration. That's always something neat to see at Husker Harvest Days. There's the various plots. This one focused on cover crops. Chad, we'll send it over to you.

0:19 Thanks, Bryce. The economics of crop production are a topic here at Husker Harvest Days this year. And talking a little bit more about beyond corn and soybeans and forage production. We're visiting with Keith Berns from Green Cover. Keith, the economics in today's agriculture. Talking corn and soybeans, what about forage production? Do those economics look different today?

0:39 Well, they sure do. You know, with the corn at kind of a break even at best, at least this spring, that's kind of what guys were looking at. With cattle prices the way they are, forage prices are pretty high. We had a lot of people transitioning some of the poorest crop ground that they have into forage production of plants like this. And it really makes sense because if I can

1:00 Graze on those acres, put pounds, especially on those feeder calves, you know, shoot three, four dollars on those feeder calves, you can put three pounds a day on some forage like this. That's kind of a no-brainer. And so, we saw a significant shift in some of that poorest crop production ground into forages like this. And it makes total sense because you can grow for the

1:21 Summer feed, but you can also we can plant things that guys can use in the wintertime as well. And to replace hay.

1:27 Sure. Now, here at Husker Harvest Days, you know, you see the plot is so long, so many different varieties and so many different choices. Tell me a little bit about the decision tree. How do you go about deciding what variety you're going to plant?

1:39 Well, we have over 120 different species that we can put in these mixes. And the way that we decide what's going to work best is we want to know, if you're the producer, what are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? And obviously grazing would be in the forage, but when do you want to graze? What type of livestock are you grazing? And so you basically we take plants that

2:00 We know will work in the time frame of when you're going to need that grazing. You know, prussic acid in sorghum sudan is an issue. So we might want to have a little bit of a pearl millet mix. It's not going to have prussic acid issues. We have stockpile mixes that you can plant and graze in the wintertime in replacement of hay. So we've got lots of different choices and combinations.

2:38 You know, from a soil health standpoint, we don't like that quite as well because you're removing all those nutrients and the carbon, but it can be done certainly. And the choices would be a little bit different because we would probably go heavier on the things that we know are just going to have the most biomass and maybe not as much that it's just going to be good quality diverse.

2:58 You know, protein and energy for the animals. But still there are certainly options. What about back to some of those traditional reasons for doing cover crops?

3:05 Do the economics of that work out today and specifically talking about what you've seen here at Husker Harvest Days? Pretty amazing, huh?

3:13 Absolutely does and really what we

3:15 See, is you can reduce your inputs by using these cover crops. And you know, here at Husker Harvest Days when we started, we were basically planting into our parking lot. The soil was hard, clay, it's kind of nasty stuff. But after 3 years of cover cropping, it's mellow, it's rich, it's black and that's just full of nutrients. It's full of organic matter. And if I was to come.

3:37 Plant corn into this now, I could grow really good corn on these plots with very few inputs, very low cost of production.

3:44 All right. Very good, Keith. Thank you for your thoughts. Appreciate it very much. Again, that's Keith Berns with Green Cover here at Husker Harvest Days. Again, discussing the economics of crop production beyond corn and soybeans, consider some of those forage crops as well. Bryce, back to you.