Colorado Cattle Cover Croppers
Three farmers are successfully integrating livestock and cover crops in a harsh climate
Our nation is blessed with some of the richest farmland in the world. But many parts of the country are arid and have very poor soils. And while some of our land surely shouldn’t be farmed at all, there are places with challenging climates where farmers are successfully implementing regenerative livestock/cropping systems.
Colorado is one of these parts of the nation where farming is certainly more challenging than in, say, Ohio. Rainfall averages outside of the mountain ranges are well under 20 inches, going down to as low as 5. Wind and its accompanying erosion can be devastating. And 300 days a year of sunshine at high elevations is great for skiers and hikers but not always for growers.
Given these challenges, many experts believe that regenerative practices won’t work — particularly the use of cover crops, given the lack of rain to get them established. One common practice is to let fields lie fallow for months or even over a year in order to have enough moisture accumulated to establish a cash crop. Many farmers are beginning to prove that this isn’t necessary, though.
This month’s interview features parts of interviews with three Colorado growers who are profitably growing cash crops with cover crops and are also integrating livestock onto their operations. They are implementing the six principles of soil health and are proving that innovative thinking — and a few simple technologies — can enable a more regenerative farming system to thrive in a difficult climate.
Lowell King
Lowell King is a grower in western Colorado. His farm receives less than 10 inches of rain a year, although they are able to use in-furrow irrigation from the Colorado River. His livestock split the year between his fields and federal grazing lands he leases.
Acres U.S.A.: Can you describe your farming operation?
King: I and my brother and my brother-in-law, we each have our own separate farms that we own and live on, and then we also rent some other ground. Horse hay is our main cash crop. We grow alfalfa and alfalfa grass mix for the horse market. Most years we have about 500 acres in hay production. And then we are rotating those acres with non-GMO corn, winter wheat and cover crops.
And so let’s say we have a field in alfalfa production for four years. In the fall of the fourth year we have two directions: we’ll either no-till drill some orchard grass into the alfalfa, and then that field will stay in hay production for another four or five years as an alfalfa-grass mix, or, if we want to rotate out of hay, we’ll simply no-till wheat in September, October, right into the alfalfa. Then in the spring we’ll terminate the alfalfa and take the wheat to maturity. We’ll often graze that wheat crop in the spring and then let it regrow and go on to maturity and combine it for grain.
We also have a certified straw market. Any that certifies weed-seed free with the state of Colorado goes for reclamation projects and such. A lot of years our straw is about half the value of our wheat crop — we’re getting 100 to 120 small square bales per acre off of a wheat crop and they’re often $5 or $6 a bale. Most years that’s between $500 and $700 per acre, just for the byproduct of the of the grain straw. Now in this year, with wheat prices higher, it’ll probably be higher on the on the grain side.
Acres U.S.A.: So you direct seed the wheat into the standing alfalfa, and then you terminate the alfalfa in the spring. Is that through grazing or do you spray there? And then the wheat is able to keep going?
King: We use a broadleaf herbicide to take out all the alfalfa and bind weed — which is our number one threat to not having certified weed-free straw — even when we were doing extensive tillage, we were always spraying our wheat with 2,4-D — some kind of a broadleaf herbicide — to take care of the volunteer wheat as well.
Acres U.S.A.: And then you take the wheat off in July?
King: Yes, usually around the 15th to the 25th of July. One of the things I encourage farmers — basically anybody who’ll listen — is to use a cover crop. The soil health principles work and will flourish for you. Treat your no-till drill as if it’s as important as your harvesting equipment — as valuable as your grain. When you’re out combining a cash crop and you have the grain cart out there, you’re no-till drill needs to be out there to plant the next crop. This stuff just flat works.
So that’s what we do. We’ll be combining and the no-till drill will be following. That’s when we plant our really diverse cover crop mix — 15 to 20 species of warm- and cool-season grasses, broadleaves — the four categories: brassicas, legumes, grasses, broadleaves.
Another important piece of our farm operation is having livestock. We have about 200 mother cows that we run year-round, and we have a summer grazing permit up on the Grand Mesa from about the middle of May through the first of October. When they come home in October, we wean the calves — fence-line weaning — on the cover crop that was planted after wheat harvest. We run the cows there for four or five days with the calves, and then we pull the cows off. They go to other pastures, and the calves stay there to fatten, rather than running them in a feedlot.
They’re basically feeder calves — we graze them up to about 750 to 800 pounds on those cover crops into the middle of January, and then we often sell them as green calves. A video company sells them for us; they take pictures right out in the pasture so that the buyer can see that they’re not fattened up on some feedlot ration — they’re just out eating this cover crop. They’re sold is all-naturals. We don’t do any kind of growth hormones. It’s all non-GMO, no growth hormone, so on. With the all-naturals program we’re trying to capture a little premium there with our calves.
One of the things that really just hit home with us on cover crops, when we started using them, was that we used to feed a fair bit of hay over winter to our cows. It’s just the way you have to do it around here, people think. Well, now that we have something growing 365 days a year in our fields — whether perennial hay or corn stalks or cover crops — we do not feed hay at all over the winter to cows or calves.
One of the huge benefits of cover crops, as far as the economics of it in our operation, is simply that we’re selling thousands of tons of horse hay a year, that we’d have to be keeping hundreds of tons of that back to feed our cows if we weren’t growing cover crops. So that in itself is a is a win-win
Acres U.S.A.: When are you calving?
King: We’re calving in late January, early February. It’s cold weather, but we still have sunny days, and the ground is frozen. It’s earlier than would be ideal if we weren’t taking cows to the mountain, but since we have to have them branded and ready to go the mountain by mid-May, we’re trying to capture that weather window.
Acres U.S.A.: Where do the mother cows go after you wean the calves in the fall?
King: We grow high-moisture corn so we can get the corn off early — in about October. Immediately following the combine, we will drill either winter wheat or cereal rye into the corn stalks. So we try to have that ready for the cows. After they come down off the mountain they’ll have two weeks or so on the cover crop with the calves. And then we put the cows on the corn stalks at that point.
We get the rye or wheat planted into the corn stalks, and then we run the cows over top of that. Even if it comes up a little, we don’t really care; we just want that cover crop planted in there. There’ll be on corn stalks usually through about the end of February.
And when the when the frost is going out of the ground, we don’t want the cows on our row-crop fields. So then we move them onto stockpiled fescue or hay fields — pastures that that we didn’t make the last cutting of hay on. There’s a pretty decent amount of dead-looking grass, but the fescue actually holds up good when the ground’s soft — with the moisture of the frost going out of it. It holds its value pretty good over winter. There’s a lot of dark-brown-looking grass, but the new grass is starting in there. They’re actually getting a little bit of that green grass as well.
From that they’ll go into rye that was planted into hay fields or corn stalks, and then the rye will get too mature toward the end of April. And then they’ll go into triticale, or winter wheat. That comes on a little later than the rye. And then on May 15 they go to the mountain.
Acres U.S.A.: And then so the cover crop cocktail that the weaned calves have been on until December or January, some of that will winter kill, right? But then some of it will continue to grow in the spring; then what happens next?
King: From that diverse mix we go into no-till corn. The volunteer wheat that’s in there is growing back and also a few others, like the vetch and some of the peas. Some of the turnips and radishes will actually over-winter if the cow some of it. We have about six or so species that come back. It’s not a real heavy cover crop, but there are roots that are pumping carbon.
Toward the end of April we’ll terminate that with Roundup and no-till the corn directly into that. If we want to run corn a second year, then we’ll just no-till cereal rye into the stalks. We graze the stalks over winter, come back again in spring and graze the rye and the little bit of corn stalk that’s still there.
We’re planting shorter-season corn so we’re not fighting it quite so hard with our cover crops. We were planting rye up to December 10 this year, and it actually germinated. We could find little roots on it in at Christmas time. In April it’s 6 inches behind the other rye that was planted after corn silage, but it’s there and it’s greening up now.
We just plant. We don’t ever have any fields that aren’t planted.
Acres U.S.A.: Did you irrigate that rye?
King: No. That’s a huge misconception. Allen Williams says there are cascading and compounding effects in everything we do in agriculture, and there’s no better way to describe all this stuff.
Farmers around here say they can’t plant wheat after corn harvest because they have to till to plant the wheat, and when they till they lose all their moisture. And if the wheat doesn’t have enough moisture in the fall it won’t germinate — which most falls here it wouldn’t.
Well, we tried really hard to get it watered in the fall the first couple years, because of that theory. What we found pretty quick was that when we no-till the wheat right into the corn beds, without disturbing the soil, there’s always some moisture there. And most times it’s enough to germinate the wheat. If there’s a half inch of rain in the next month, that’s plenty of moisture. It works every time if you don’t disturb your soil. As our soil health has improved, that obviously helps too.
Guys are held back from doing some of this because of their old mentality. They forget that things are different when they don’t lose all their soil moisture when they till.
Here in western Colorado, every time we’ve done it it worked just fine. Last fall was exceptionally dry, but it worked just fine for us.
So, we had planted cereal rye after first-year corn, and then we’ll no-till corn again. Then that second fall, it’s ready to go back into alfalfa. We plant our diverse cover crop mix, but we planted at about a half rate. We put a full rate of alfalfa in — about 20 pounds of alfalfa seed, along with like a half rate of the diverse cover crop mix.
Then we’ll graze that, and that time we’re pretty sensitive to when we have the feeder calves on it, because we’re trying to get our perennial alfalfa established. We make sure it’s frozen nice and solid, and we graze that cover crop off. Then come spring, there’s our alfalfa. It’s partway established without any waiting period. Anytime you establish a perennial, you end up having about a year of very little production. This way, in that single year of alfalfa establishment, we’re getting our full season of winter wheat harvest and a diverse grazing for feeder calves. All the while we’re establishing our alfalfa.
Acres U.S.A.: So when are you irrigating?
King: Our irrigation season runs from about April 10 through October 31. Anytime in that season we have access to irrigation water if we want it. And that’s a huge thing. Here in western Colorado, we’re irrigating right out of the Colorado River. We have good water rights. Water consumption is a big thing. Even though we’re double cropping and growing these cover crops, our water bill is down about 10 percent. We irrigate with in-furrow irrigation, and we meter it coming in, but then the tailwater that leaves our farm is not metered. We’re actually doing a pretty extensive study with Colorado State, the river district, and Western Landowners Alliance here on my farm this year to meter the water coming in our fields and the water leaving the fields, plus the rainfall. Then we’ll actually know what the consumptive use is, to see if we’re actually being more efficient with our water.
Acres U.S.A.: What would this look like without irrigation?
King: I haven’t tried doing it. Well, I have one field that I farm here without irrigation, and it definitely changes the picture quite a bit. I don’t grow on any corn on it, or even alfalfa. Our annual precipitation is 8 inches. I would say if you could have 12-15 inches, you could do just fine, if you learned how to work with it. But I really can’t answer that.
Acres U.S.A.: What’s keeping your neighbors from doing this?
King: Nothing. They’re converting. There’s still a lot of tillage and a lot of fallow fields and whatnot. But there’s a lot less than there was just five years ago. Guys are catching on. They’re watching what’s happening, and as more people do it — rotational grazing and cover crops — they can’t help but notice.
I’ve been doing this for 15 years, and my neighbor right across the fence row is still doing extensive tillage, and that concerns me because either what I’m doing doesn’t look appealing, or I haven’t been having conversations with him like I should be or something. They were skeptical at first. They don’t grasp the commitment to the system — following the drill with the combine the same day — that kind of stuff. But they’re interested; they’re wanting to learn. I would still say fear of failure is the number one thing that that keeps people from engaging fully in the system — the fear of it not being as profitable or of looking like they’re a trashy farmer.
There’s a huge amount of development going on here, and so a lot of these farmers don’t even own their fields. They’re investment properties; the farmers are leasing from the owner. So they say, “Well, if I owned this, it would make sense for me to invest in soil health. But since I don’t own it, I’m just gonna mine it year after year, because I might only have it for the next year or two.”
Acres U.S.A.: What are some steps growers in your area could take to start reducing synthetic herbicides — to gain some of the same benefits by using cover crops?
King: We’ve actually reduced our synthetic chemicals, fertilizers quite a bit. A cover crop is much easier to terminate than perennial weeds, which can become chemical resistant. We can reduce our rates and still get a very effective control.
The other the thing is that you couldn’t maximize your system like we are without some herbicides. We can plant cereal rye, vetch — peas in the spring — to roller-crimp and no-till corn into. I would have to be planting that cover crop in August — not in October or November, like we do. It would definitely change up our rotation. You have to start earlier in order to have a bigger density — a better establishment — to get enough biomass from the cover crop to have effective weed control in the spring. It’s phenomenal — the amount of biomass of guys that plant cereal rye after corn silage in mid-September, compared to when we plant after grain harvest in mid-October or early November. The biomass we have in our rye that’s planted in November is by no means enough to be able to roller-crimp and have effective weed control.
I can see us doing some organic and five or ten years from now. I used to say absolutely not, because it takes extensive village to do organic. Well, there’s guys now proving that you don’t need to use tillage if you know how to use and manage cover crops in rotation.
For example, this year, when we terminate a grass field, we’re going to plant peas and vetch and clover into that sod in, say, August and then see if we can get a good legume cover crop. Our plan will be to no-till corn into that next spring, and I would like to see if that would be possible to actually roller-crimp that and not using chemicals — to try this before I actually try being organic.
Learn more about Lowell King and Hit the Hay Farm at lifetimeag.com. |
Curt Sayles
Curt Sayles grows dryland grain crops and raises livestock in eastern Colorado, where he receives an average of 17 inches of rain a year. His cover crops improve soil health and are also used to graze his cattle.
Sayles: This is probably one of the harder spots in the United States to make regenerative ag work. Everyone perceives that the principles are valid. But it’s a matter of fine-tuning the principles for your environment. My wife and I went to a regenerative ag conference in Belize several years ago, and there are farmers down there who say, “Oh, we can’t do this — it won’t work here.” They get 60-70 inches annual rainfall. Everybody has an excuse for why it won’t work.
Here, of course, the excuse for many people is lack of rainfall / consistent rainfall. But it’s not a well-known fact that during the fallow period, if you do that, you’re only saving maybe 25 to 45 percent of the moisture. You’re wasting the rest of it. So why not have it doing something for you? I think that’s one misnomer that people have.
And, of course, cover crops with cattle grazing on them doesn’t look nice and prim and proper. That’s another force against adoption.
When you go to no-till, you may not have the yield to brag about at the coffee shop. But it’s about dollars in the pocket, not yield in the field.
Acres U.S.A.: What are your neighbors doing? What is what is the typical pattern cropping pattern there in eastern Colorado? When are things in the ground and when is fallow typically?
Sayles: That’s been changing a bit. Guys are doing different things. But one neighbor, for example, is conventional wheat with fallow and full tillage. He harvests wheat in, say, July, then he’ll let the ground set that fall and grow up with weeds. And then in the spring he starts tilling it and then plants wheat that next fall.
Acres U.S.A.: It would seem to make so much sense to just plant a cover crop there at wheat harvest.
Sayles: It makes absolute sense. But it’s the mindset that “any water that falls goes down about a foot and then it just sits there, and it’s waiting on me to use it.” But water is either going up or going down. It never sets anywhere.
And then, of course, there are chemical prices, and we’re starting to get resistant weeds. You come to that fork in the road, and you can either go back to tillage or you can push on through and diversify your crop rotation.
Acres U.S.A.: Is there any irrigation there in your area, or is it all dryland?
Sayles: No. We have a pretty consistent 17-inch annual rainfall. The problem we run into is that we can go from 8 inches to 20 or 23 inches. We have a broad, you know, you get these two here. They might have 17 inches, but it goes from 15 to 19.
In Colorado, probably 90 to 95 percent of the irrigation out of the Ogallala aquifer will be shut down. It’s going to have a dramatic impact on local economies.
Acres U.S.A.: How would cover crops play into that with that? Do you think that would make it more likely that a farmer would turn to cover crops?
Sayles: Well, my personal bias is that these guys, especially with these low water wells, should have been using cover crops and integrating livestock into their rotation, and they would have increased their profitability. If this irrigated ground becomes dryland — because of the intensive tillage and intensive use of chemicals and fertilizers, that ground is going to be almost sterile.
Acres U.S.A.: Can you describe your goals for your system?
Sayles: Our long-term goal, if we can achieve it, would be organic no-till. That’s where we would love to go. Last summer we built a roller crimper. We went five months last fall with no moisture, so our cereal rye cover crop is just coming up now here in at the end of March. So we won’t be able to crimp it; we’ll have to chemical terminate it. But we’ve reduced our chemistry. We’ll do a pre-plant burndown, a post-emerge cleanup, and then on a crop like sunflowers and some of our chickpeas, we can come back with one more. And we use them sparingly. If we have a good span and we don’t think we need it, we just keep it in the shop.
The other thing we’ve done, to the best degree we can, is that we’ve integrated livestock into our rotation. It costs money to build fence, and it costs money to buy cattle, so we’re growing as we can.
I wasn’t raised around livestock; I’m just a grain farmer. But my son-in-law wanted to get involved in the farm, and he’s the livestock guy. He’s grazing on our cover crops, so we a grass-fed enterprise now. This year we’re going to start integrating sheep into it, to diversify our livestock.
Acres U.S.A.: This is all on your cover crops, or do you have some perennial pasture?
Sayles: Most of the perennial pasture is cool season. So a lot of times we’ll graze that early, and then when that starts drying up, by that time we’ve got our cover crops up and we move the cattle onto cover crops.
Acres U.S.A.: What cash crops are you growing?
Sayles: We don’t really raise much winter wheat anymore. This is winter wheat country, but the winter wheat varieties are not very strong soil health tools, and so we’ve moved away from meat. Our cereal crop is cereal rye. It’s a go-to for cover crops and as a cash crop — and for grazing.
Then we grow oil sunflowers and dryland corn. We grow Prozo millet and foxtail millet — they’re both spring-planted, so depending on the year and the prices we can shift back and forth between those.
Last year was our first year of buckwheat. Last year we planted a quarter section, but of course last year was a bad year to try anything new. Buckwheat is supposed to make phosphorus available in the soil, and millet is a big phosphorus user. So we’re going to follow buckwheat with millet and see how that works out.
Another crop we introduced last year was chickpeas. It’s a draught-tolerant crop. One of our shortcomings in our nutrition profile is nitrogen anomalies. We had tried some field peas five or eight years ago. They didn’t do very good, but we could see their effect in the soil — for three years, anyway. If we can get chickpeas to break even, then I think we’ll see the effects for a couple crops after that.
We also do a lot of companion cropping. Safflower is another crop that we like to put in. It’s a good soil health crop, so we usually have a couple hundred acres of safflower, and we rotate it with our sunflower acres. And we’re going to try mung beans this year, as a companion crop with millet.
Acres U.S.A.: Do you think another reason maybe some people don’t do cover crops is because this is a lot more complicated? You just listed off seven or eight different cash crops. We haven’t even talked about all different species of covers that you’re going to use with them. It’s a lot more complicated than wheat-fallow-wheat-fallow.
Sayles: It is. Ten or so years ago I started to grow concerned — I’d go to a farm meeting and there were old, gray-haired guys, like myself, and I was like, “Who’s going to be farming?” A lot of these guys, their lifestyle and their income have come together, and they know what they’re doing, and it’s worked year in and year out, and they think, “Why do I need to change?”
That’s 80 percent of the guys, but that other 20 percent — the young guys — would like to try different things. But Grandpa’s living longer and Dad’s living longer, and it’s hard to change when they’re still around.
Farmers are going to have to do things different, and they’re going to have to get more efficient. You come to that fork in the road, and instead of trying to move forward with cover crops and reducing your dependence on chemicals and fertilizers, some guys are going to go back to tillage, which will reduce the carbon in their soil, which will increase their dependency on fertilizers and chemicals.
Learn more about Curt Sayles and CSF Farms at csffarms.com. |
Brendon Rockey
Brendon Rockey grows certified seed potatoes in the San Luis Valley in southcentral Colorado. He has successfully integrated both cover crops and companion crops to improve his soil and reduce insect pressure. He integrates livestock into his operation without actually owning them.
Acres U.S.A.: Can you describe your operation — acreage and what you’re and your use of cover crops?
Rockey: We’re about 500 acres total. It’s all under center-pivot irrigation, either sandy loam or loamy sand soils, real low precipitation — we’re less than 6 inches of annual precipitation. Without irrigation, agriculture would not exist here.
We traditionally we used to be a potato / malting barley rotation — a two-year rotation. Water became a real big issue. We pull our water from an aquifer beneath us, and we really started depleting that aquifer. So we were one of the first to pull away from our barley contract, and we started bringing in cover crops. Lack of water was absolutely the most important catalyst for us as far as adopting cover crops.
When we started off, they were monocultures. We were trying to conserve water but also trying to address a few other issues at the same time. Nematode control was a big topic for us. We really leaned on cover crops that were known for managing nematodes, and they did a good job, especially for potato.
The lack of water really opened our eyes to some alternative practices for things such as managing nematodes. So that was very positive. We were seeing a lot of really good things as far as the cover crops with water savings. The cover crops did a lot to improve our soil in the rotation years. Our soil was healthier going into the potatoes in the next year. We saw a reduction in certain diseases on the potatoes like rhizoctonia, but we were also able to be more efficient with our water on the potato crop as a result of improving our soil structure and adding some carbon to the soil.
Acres U.S.A.: Water seems like the main reason many people in Colorado would advocate not using cover crops — because the cover crop will use some of your water, versus letting land be fallow — in order to store up some measure of water. Why would you argue that the cover crop is actually improving your water holding capacity?
Rockey: I think the trouble with that argument is it’s very short sighted. In our area, if I have a dry fallow, I’m not running my pivot that year. My meter is not running, so sure — it appears as if I’m saving water. But everywhere in this valley, where we’ve seen people dry fallow, it damages the soil so drastically that the next year, when you raise your potatoes, your water infiltration rate goes to crap. A neighbor tried this technique — trying to save some water by going dry fallow — and the next year he could not get water into his soil. Everything he saved that first year, he used up the next.
There’s a lot of other damaging impact from not having that living plant in the soil. You have to look at how the system functions as a whole.
Acres U.S.A.: Can you describe how you use cover crops?
Rockey: We started with a seven-species mix we thought would work well in this valley, and it was beautiful. It really opened my eyes to the concept of diversity. Every species that was out there in the mix looked healthier than it would have been in a monoculture. We had to change the mindsets, because what we’d always been taught was that anything other than the main crop out there is competition. And that is absolutely false. When you have the correct combinations out there, you can actually have a collaboration.
In that first year, when we did that diverse mix, we went out and chopped the crop and incorporated it back into the soil. We were using it like a green-manure crop. Whatever was not in potatoes was a cover crop, and by that point we had stopped growing barley.
In other parts of the country, if you have a longer growing season, and if you don’t have a limitation on water, you can plant a cover crop before or after your cash crop. Here we barely have enough time most years to get the cash crop out. So that first year, half of our acres were potatoes and the other half were this seven-species cover crop.
The next year, when I grew a potato crop following that diverse cover crop, it was the biggest leap forward we ever took in one year as far as soil health. It was amazing how much I was able to reduce my inputs. Since I had these deep-rooted cover crops the year before, they actually brought up a lot of fertility that had been pushed below the root zone of the potatoes and the barley. I was absolutely hooked on diversity right there; I never went back to monocultures after that.
Acres U.S.A.: What time of year were you incorporating this seven-species mix — sometime in the fall, and then letting it sit until the spring?
Rockey: I would plant the cover crop about mid-June. I was waiting until we were past the real strong threat of frost. There was a lot of warm-season stuff in there; if we got a hard frost, it might take some stuff out. We’d grow it about six weeks, and I was able to get good biomass up top from that six weeks. If you let it go much beyond that, it wants to start producing seed. I wanted vegetative growth without seed production. We would go through and use a mower or flail chopper to terminate the crop, and then we would come in and incorporate the residue into the soil in early- or mid-August.
The next thing that happened is I fell in love with diversity and really started seeing how positive that was to our production model. I had the seven-species mix, but then I started growing eight-, nine-, ten-species mixes. But I was still growing a monoculture of potatoes, and that really started to bother me, because I was really convinced of this diversity thing.
We used to grow field peas in one of our potato fields, and we would get some volunteer field peas out there once in a while. One day I was out in the potato field and there were these peas growing right along with the potatoes. And I remember just sitting there for an hour staring at them. I was like, “Wait a minute. This is pretty cool.” The potatoes were growing, and the pea was climbing up the potato plant. Pea is also a legume. So it’s nitrogen, right? It wasn’t a big bushy plant and wasn’t really competing for resources. It wasn’t competing for water or nutrients or sunshine. I wondered if this wouldn’t be a good thing to do.
So the next year, when we planted potatoes, I picked a couple rows and planted peas right on top of the potatoes. I’m mechanically controlling all of my weeds. I cultivate three times, so I can’t establish anything in between the rows.
When we made this first transition on our farm, we were conventional as anybody else — we were using all the chemicals and the synthetic fertilizers. Our motivation for making these changes was to reduce our exposure to chemicals — us and our customers. But I didn’t know what to do instead. We had to rely on those chemicals because we had absolutely destroyed our soils, and the soils weren’t functional. We had to shift our thinking — to improve the health of our soil to where we no longer needed those chemicals.
Today I don’t use any herbicide on my farm. No fungicide, no insecticide, no nematicide. I do use a chemical to kill the potatoes, but that’s it.
So we put the peas out there with the potatoes, and everything came up together. I was able to manage my weeds, and everything looked beautiful. I harvested those rows separately, and the rows that had the peas planted with them had a yield boost. If this was truly competition, there is no way I would have seen a yield increase.
Acres U.S.A.: You didn’t try to harvest the peas — you were just trying to harvest potatoes, correct?
Rockey: Yeah, the peas were a companion crop.
I liked what the cover crops were doing, but initially my mindset was that I had to do one or the other — a cash crop or a cover crop. But when I started thinking about companion crops, I thought, “Why can’t I get the benefits of cover crops every single year?” I figured out that 15 pounds was about the right rate, and these peas cost 40 cents a pound. It came out to about $6 an acre. The benefit I was getting was definitely greater than $6 an acre.
So then I started doing peas on the whole farm. But I wanted to see what else I could do. So every year after that I kept bringing in something else. The first year it was just field peas. The next year I brought in chickling vetch. The next year I brought in chickpeas. And then I brought in buckwheat. The first three were all legumes, which was great because you have the nitrogen fixation.
I really like buckwheat. It works great in our soils. We have high-calcareous soils, and buckwheat does a lot for mobilizing phosphorus in the soil. We saw some really beneficial things there. One year I was a little late on terminating the crop and some of the buckwheat went to seed. The next year some of that buckwheat volunteered in my potatoes, but the buckwheat was just loaded with beneficial insects — wasps, beetles, ladybugs, lacewings — which are really important to us. Since we’re growing certified potato seed, we have to manage aphids, which can spread virus throughout our crop.
Acres U.S.A.: When are you terminating your potato crop?
Rockey: We kill the potato crop in early- to mid-August, and the potatoes sit in the ground for about four weeks before we harvest. We usually start potato harvest around September.
Acres U.S.A.: So you don’t really have anything in the field over the winter, correct?
Rockey: Right. We have an irrigation season. By October 1, or by November 1, we can’t run sprinklers after that, and then we can’t start them again until April 1. We get so cold here that nothing’s going to after potato harvest anyway — we just don’t have that window.
Then the last thing I brought in as a companion crop with the potatoes was fava beans. Cover crop seed companies started breeding fava beans for a smaller seed so they could fit into normal planters. Favas are great for nitrogen fixation, but they are fantastic for feeding beneficial insects as well.
I provide a food source for beneficial insects. I can overwhelm my fields with beneficial insects so the aphids never have a chance to establish their populations. We used to buy ladybugs, but that was doing us no good at all because we didn’t have a food source for the beneficial insects. The buckwheat and the fava beans are the food source for these beneficial insects — their pollen, nectar and extra floral nectar.
I also started planting a pollinator strip all the way around my field and through the middle of the field. It’s a diverse flowering mix. I can plant them real early. It’s the first green spot on my field. So I start establishing those beneficial insect populations before the companion crops are even out of the soil in the potato field.
The other thing I’ve been observing is that if I do find aphids in my potato field, they tend to be on the companion crops — the aphids actually prefer feeding off of things like the peas and the fava beans. That’s really good for me, because if it even enters my field, and it has a virus in its stylet, if it can feed off of two to three other plants first, it cleans that stylet out. Now, if that agent goes and feeds off of a potato plant, it won’t spread that virus. The aphid then doesn’t do any physical damage to the potato crop.
Having that diversity out there, giving aphids a place to clean their stylet — if they happen to make it into my field — I think this is actually contributing greatly to our success with maintaining our seed lots.
So there’s a lot of different things going on at the same time. It’s the opposite of this reductionist thinking, like — the aphids are one problem, so let me use one solution to solve that one problem, right?
Acres U.S.A.: It’d be impossible to run an experiment where you’re isolating each of these variables.
Rockey: It’s very difficult for researchers. They come out to my farm, and they get really excited about what I’m doing, but none of them want to touch it with a 10-foot pole as far as research —because it is very difficult to quantify a holistic management system with a reductionist approach.
Acres U.S.A.: And you’re now incorporating livestock into the mix as well, correct?
Rockey: Right. I’m working with a guy who brings out cattle and sheep onto all of my cover crop acres. He brings cattle on our full circle, because we put up an electric fence all the way around the field. We systematically move the cattle around the field in these pie wedges, with the pivot at the center for a water source.
Then on our two half circles, where we have cover crops, he brings out sheep. He has a sheepherder that comes out with him, so we don’t have to mess with electric fence or anything. I love having the sheep out there.
Acres U.S.A.: What time of year are the livestock in your fields?
Rockey: We used to plant a cover crop in mid-June and terminate it all together a few weeks later. Now, since we have these different herbs coming through, we’ve staggered our planting a little bit to really stretch that out. I’ll still plant one half circle pretty early — probably early June. After about six weeks of growth, he brings the cattle out and starts grazing on that half circle. Three to four weeks after we planted that first half, we plant the other half for the cattle, and the cattle are here for about a month and a half.
He has some BLM contracts for the sheep up in the mountains, so we lay off wherever the sheep are going to be — we plant that stuff much later. The sheep get here around mid-September. Water is a concern — if I planted everything early, I’d end up using more water than I really want to for that rotational crop. I try to use a certain amount of water to get a certain amount of biomass, and then we can shut it off. The sheep are here until October or November, and then they’re completely out of feed, and I can’t run the sprinkler anymore.
The livestock have eliminated the termination process for me. Initially, we would have to go out with a tractor and an implement and terminate that crop. But now I’m using the animals to terminate that cover crop.
Learn more about Brendon Rockey and Rockey Farms at brendonrockey.com. |