Cover Crops and Cotton
With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.
Cover crops have come from an experimental trend to a soil health mainstay for many in agriculture, but what is the place for the practice in cotton? Jessica Kelton, Soil Health Educator with the Soil Health Institute…
“One of the projects that I work on is the US Regenerative Cotton Fund and really the focus of that project is to encourage the adoption of soil health management practices for growers but recognizing that not just one person has all the answers for growers, whether they're interested in adopting for the first time or they're experienced and maybe want to change their practices. So getting involved with the USRCF allows growers to be able to be put in touch with technical specialists that have that local knowledge.”
You don't have to reinvent the wheel. She says people are already working on this…
“We try to take every opportunity we have to highlight those really innovative growers that have made these practices work on their farm and we usually do this at field events we try to have a field event in every region we're working in.”
And last but not least, a little bit of monetary incentivization never hurts…
“If you're just starting out you're looking to do cover crops and maybe you're not getting any incentive payments through NRCS or another project we have a payment up to $1200 for growers to implement cover crops on up to 40 acres.”
A good way there just to dip your toe into the water. Soilhealthinstitute.org to learn more.
