Harnessing Cover Crops to Address Unique Farm Needs and Achieve Maximum Benefits

Nov 27, 2025

By Sarah Hirsh and Haley Sater et.al

Cover crops can provide various benefits, such as building soil organic matter, scavenging nutrients, or controlling pests such as weeds. Maryland already leads the nation in having the highest percent of farmland practicing cover cropping (USDA ERS). The Maryland Department of Agriculture’s (MDA) cost share program recorded over 450,000 acres of cover crops during the 2023–2024 season. However, since cover crops are not a primary source of farm income, we tend to spend less time planning and managing them when compared to cash crops. Cover crops may be perceived as a one-size-fits-all bridge between the cash crops, with the same cover crop used regardless of other system factors. However, all cover crops are not equal, and different cover crops can be used for different purposes. Cover crops will be more beneficial if we tailor them to achieve a primary purpose or goal, and to fit best within the cash crop rotation. In addition, we need to be realistic about how the cover crop is likely to perform, given restraints such as the length of growing season, and the capabilities of the farm operation to manage the cover crop. Cover crop planning can greatly increase the benefits that cover crops provide, making the overall farming system more productive, sustainable and profitable.

Project partners (University of Maryland Extension, Future Harvest, Million Acre Challenge, Sustainable Chesapeake, Maryland Department of Agriculture, and Colorado State Institute for Research in the Social Sciences) worked with farmers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to plan and implement site-specific, purposeful cover crops. We recruited and planned cover crops with 12 farmers in year one, 21 farmers in year two, and 17 farmers in year three. The farms included all nine counties on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Farmers participated from one to three years of the project. We developed a cover crop planning protocol, during which farmers identified the top needs of the field that can be addressed through cover cropping, identified and/or created gaps in the cash crop rotation to fit cover crops, and critically evaluated the limitations of cover crops. We encouraged farmers to consider these three factors together when planning cover crops, since they are inter-related.

For example, cover crop selection and management would vary based on the length of the growing season and the subsequent cash crop. For example, a legume cover crop would be more valuable to a subsequent corn crop than a subsequent soybean crop. The crop rotation may also need to be modified to allow for a long enough cover crop growing season to accomplish a particular goal (Figure 2). See the published factsheet: https://extension.umd.edu/resource/cover-crop-planning-fs-2024-0743/ for more details.

The collaborating farmers planted and managed the cover crops on 32 fields totaling 1,286 acres in year one, 58 fields totaling 2,197 acres in year two, and 40 fields totaling 2,123 acres in year three. Participating farmers received cost-share payments from the project to implement cover crops.

Farmers primary purposes for cover crops included building organic matter, contributing nitrogen, controlling weeds and other pests, and eliminating black plastic. To measure the success of the cover crop achieving the intended goals we measured cover crop biomass in fall and spring, and spring cover crop %C, %N, and C/N ratio.

Source : umd.edu

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”