The South East Research Farm at Redvers is working on cover crops – practices that keep living roots in the soil beyond the harvest of our traditional crops.
While cover crops are viewed as a regenerative agriculture practice, many worry that they reduce yields for the primary crops
Kevin Hursh of SaskAgToday.com talked with Lana Shaw, executive director of the South East Research Farm about the cover crop work they’re doing.
"We're looking at things like underseeding, where we have an understory crop that is seeded at a low density. It's kind of like planting your own weeds that you know you can tolerate and you know you can kill when you want to. And ideally something that will continue growing into the fall or however, depending on when you want to be able to kill it. It could winter kill on its own or it could still be growing in the spring depending on what the objectives are and what you've planted.
"And then we've got another project where we're trying to figure out do volunteers have benefits basically acting like a cover crop. Because all the farmers say, 'Well, I have a cover crop, it's just my oat volunteers.' Well, now we have a project that is trying to quantify the effects of that. Whether that will be officially recognized as a cover crop in some programs, not necessarily. But potentially as a soil health benefit, there could be some good things about leaving some volunteers in place." Shaw told Hursh at the Convergence Conference in Regina.
She said cover crops can "have the ability to influence water infiltration into the soil", especially soil that is "prone to crusting or that don't have great structure."
Click here to see more...