Talking About Cover Crops and Diverse Weed Management

Apr 10, 2026

The Iowa Learning Farms (ILF) conservation webinar taking place April 15, at noon CDT will feature Wesley Everman, assistant professor and extension week specialist, Iowa State University (ISU), in an interview segment hosted by ISU professor Matthew Helmers. Everman’s research centers on identifying herbicide resistant weeds and integrated methods to manage them. His current research projects include exploring cover crops, application technology, novel traits, and existing chemistry to develop optimal management strategies.

In the webinar, “Beyond the Basics: Advanced Cover Crop Series - A Chat with Wesley Everman,” Everman and webinar host, Matthew Helmers, will engage in a live face-to-face discussion about the relationship between successful cover crop strategies and weed management approaches. They will cover topics including weed suppression, planting green, and impacts on weed seed bank dynamics. Everman and Helmers will also address questions from the webinar audience during the session.

“Cover crops provide a non-chemical tool which shifts the growth and competitive ability of weed species like waterhemp, limiting its potential as a dominant species while providing support for other weed management practices,” said Everman. “Cover crops are an important part of weed management, but the practice must be a part of a larger comprehensive approach. Diversity in weed management is no longer an option; it is a requirement.”

Source : usda.gov

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators