By Dr. Robert L. Myers, University of Missouri

The proliferation of USDA climate-smart programs supporting cover crops, including the Farmers for Soil Health initiative and NACD’s climate-smart project, has created a demand for more information on cover crops. My new cover crop guidebook, “Cover Crops: Improving Life on the Land,” provides a detailed set of information on cover crops, including how they are being used by a dozen different, experienced farmers from across the U.S.

One of the farmers profiled is Jimmy Emmons, a past president of the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts and an NACD Soil Health Champion. The following is an excerpt from the book’s profile on Emmons.

When Jimmy and his wife Ginger first tried cover crops in 2010, they planted a warm season mix of about six species, including sorghum, millet, and cowpeas. This was planted after winter wheat harvest in mid-summer. Over time, they experimented with various options and now try to plant every field with cover crops, either after winter cereal harvest in mid-summer or after cash crops like sorghum are harvested in the fall.

The Emmons currently row crop about 1,400 acres and also utilize about 5,500 acres of native range, moving cattle between rangeland and cover crop fields for grazing based on season and forage availability. They typically have about 200-250 head of cattle at any one time. For row crops, they’ve become increasingly diversified, trying to have at least a four-year rotation on each field. Common cash crops are sorghum (milo), soybeans or cowpeas (or occasionally mung beans), sesame or sunflowers, and a winter cereal. While winter wheat remains their primary winter cereal, they have grown some triticale, winter barley and cereal rye for seed harvest. Jimmy noted that they’ve had to stop growing corn because of problems with feral hogs in their area.

After the winter cereals are harvested in mid-summer, they always drill in a warm season mix of about 15 cover crop species. A typical summer mix includes primarily warm season species such as a couple of types of sorghum or sorghum-sudan, three species of millet (proso, foxtail, pearl millet), sunn hemp, and cowpeas. They also include a few cool season species in that summer mix, such as collards, sweet clover and red clover. They stagger the summer cover crop plantings a bit depending on rainfall to try to provide a variety of grazing options going into fall.

After harvest of summer cash crops in the fall, they also plant a diverse cover crop mix, but use just cool season species at that time of the year. Typical cool season covers they drill in the fall include triticale, winter barley, winter wheat, forage radish, forage turnip, hairy vetch, collards, and red clover. If it’s really late when they are seeding the cover crops in fall, they will simplify the mix to just include winter cereals, since the cereals are more tolerant of late planting.

Jimmy observed that cover crops have significantly helped both in excessively wet periods and prolonged dry periods. He commented that improved soil resiliency to extreme whiplash weather has really helped them stay in business. During periods of drought, they have more soil moisture than conventional fields, and when they do get a rainstorm downburst, they get every bit of rain captured.

Asked about what message he would give to farmers who haven’t yet tried covers, Jimmy said, “never say never. There are so many places to go learn about covers—conferences, books, farmer networks, and social media.”

As the latest example of an in-depth resource on cover crops, this 283-page guidebook on cover crops, developed for farmers and farm advisors, addresses cover crop selection and management, equipment and economics, and summaries of 44 different cover crop species. It also discusses how to address challenges with cover crops and dives into the soil biology impact of cover crops.

My new resource book on cover crops is available to conservation districts and others via the books section of Amazon.