Keith Berns rarely recommends a ready-made cover crop mix. He advises farmers to begin with the problem they want to solve, experiment under their own conditions, and decide what matters most: maximum yield or profitability.
Two weeks, seven states, and about 7,000 kilometers across the U.S. Midwest. The journey ended in Chicago with one clear conclusion: farmers on both sides of the ocean face similar challenges, but often approach them differently.
At Michael Thompson’s farm in Kansas, no-till is only the beginning. Cover crops, livestock integration, and crop diversity form a broader system for conserving moisture, protecting the soil, and gradually restoring its health.
In Nebraska, we visited Green Cover Seed. What interested me most were the demonstration plots, where you can see the individual components of cover crop mixes, and the story of a company that grew out of the needs of its …
In Illinois and Iowa, farmers leave strips of perennial grass in natural depressions to carry runoff safely across fields. One farmer said he would keep them even without government payments because they protect the soil.
