As part of the celebration of the International Year of Soil, the New York Times published an article this week on the value of planting cover crops between regular harvests. Among the benefits: increase in soil carbon, decrease in erosion, reduction in compaction, lower fertilizer costs, and improvement in crop yields. And as I’ve pointed out in previous blog posts, it can be part of a livestock production system too. While only a small fraction of farmers currently use cover crops, the number is growing so rapidly that cover crop seeds are hard to come by in some areas.
Here’s another article from AgWeb discussing the use of cover crops in livestock production.
