The Virginia SWCD encourages plating cover crops as a means of capturing valuable nitrogen still present in crop stubble after harvest.
Cover crop payments in excess of $25 per acre are paid to farmers demonstrating a willingness to engage in this practice. They have a graduated, or incremental, payment plan based on what cover crop is planted and when.
Here’s a portion of the blog post:
The early payment is to encourage early plant establishment to facilitate nitrogen scavenging in the fall before leaching occurs. Once the nitrogen is leached out then scavenging and recycling is a moot point.
Early fall cover crops are primarily for nitrogen scavenging and are intended to go behind corn or other crops where there is a chance of residual chemical nitrogen.
This is not to negate or minimize the benefits of later planted cover crops as soil conservation tools or biomass and soil building tools and these benefits are real; but if the crop is late planted, the at risk nitrogen will have a greater probability of being gone in surface runoff with fall rains or having moved down the soil profile and leached to the groundwater.
Tags: cover crop, nitrogen, nitrogen-friendly cover crop help reduce the cost for fertilizer., No-Till, No-Till farming, sequesters available nitrogen
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