A cover crop is a crop planted primarily to manage soil fertility, soil quality, water, weeds, pests, diseases, biodiversity and wildlife.

Leaving the soil undisturbed and keeping something growing restores the natural cycles of the soil. Residues and roots create more organic matter in the soil, and increased organic matter serves as a food source to various soil organisms and increases the biological activity. Higher biological activity increases nutrient cycling and availability, while reducing nutrient loss due to run-off. Combined, these activities improve soil health. The use of cover crops is very important to Monsanto as it fits with our overall strategy of conserving more.

In a typical cover crop strategy, a farmer will plant a crop such as rye grass or clover that won’t be harvested in the fall. These plants will remain in the ground over the winter, protecting the soil structure and fixing some of the nitrogen that is in the soil. Then in the spring, farmers plant their crop over top of the cover, and they’ve effectively maintained important nutrients, improved the soil’s health, and reduced erosion.

The Tifton USDA-ARS station in the U.S. has many years of experience in actively evaluating ground covers. Monsanto has been fortunate that we’ve had the opportunity to piggyback on the work established with our colleagues.

We combined our funding with partners and studied the effects of using ryegrass as a cover crop.  The ryegrass worked very well and resulted in the soil conservation district funding a program to promote a deep tillage event, fertilizing and planting cover ryegrass before planting cotton.  The ryegrass mulch is very successful at reducing problem weeds, such as Palmer Amaranth (pigweed) germination.

While the benefits of using cover crops are widely understood, implementing them successfully can be difficult. But new information and technology are available, and we felt it was important for our teams to be involved to help disseminate that information. Our people were proud to be a co-sponsor with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation of two important farmer workshops on cover crop education. These conferences were administered by the Soil Water Conservation Society and focused on cover crop management and improving soil health. There were 20 sponsors and exhibitors ranging from cover crop seed companies, not-for-profit organizations, government/university and aerial services.

Additionally, we hosted the Monsanto Cover Crops Workshop on June 5, 2012. Sixteen experts presented their thoughts on research needs and potential actions that could be taken with the cooperation of government, academia and industry to help broaden the adoption of cover crop technology.