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Money Available to Help Wisconsin Farmers

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Thursday, May 29, 2014   

MADISON, Wis. - Cover crops are becoming more prevalent on Wisconsin farms, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has announced a July 11 deadline for landowners to apply for funds to defray the cost of planting the crop.

According to NCRS State Resource Conservationist Patrick Murphy, cover crops have great value.

"They are an effective soil erosion control tool to reduce soil loss during the non-cropping periods of the year, where we can have fairly substantial runoff events," Murphy explains. "And we're also very interested in cover crops' ability to capture nutrients at the end of the growing season."

Cover crops are so named because they reduce wind and water erosion by literally covering up the soil. They also sequester carbon and improve soil structure.

Vegetable farmer Allan Brooks has 2,100 acres under cultivation in Fond du Lac and Green Lake counties, and says he has used cover crops for decades.

He lists the benefits to his operation. "Soil erosion control, as well as additional organic matter, all kinds of things. My dad grew processing crops since 1955, so he cover-cropped, and I've grown cover crops ever since," says Brooks.

Recently, large national conferences on cover-cropping – like those held in Omaha in February, and a Michael Fields Agricultural Institute gathering in March in Wisconsin Dells – have seen big attendance and a lot of interest.

Murphy, who is based in Madison but travels around the state for NRCS, says he's seeing much more widespread use of cover crops by Wisconsin farmers and growers.

"In the central sands, quite a few of the vegetable-potato growers have gone ahead on their own and started to implement cover crops, and their main immediate concern is wind erosion, so stabilizing that soil surface so that the soil particles don't begin to blow," explains Murphy.

"Now, more and more dairymen – particularly after the drought of 2012, we had a lot of farmers who planted cover crops, primarily just to have something on the land to suppress weeds," he adds.

Landowners need to sign up at their nearest NRCS office by July 11 to be considered for cover crop funding assistance.




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