Onto greener pastures with rotational grazing of cover crops: Lessons learned from four on-farm case studies

Abstract

Cover crops are touted for improving soil health, reducing nutrient losses to ground and surface waters, and providing soil protection between cash-crop growing seasons. While they may improve cash crop yield stability and resilience in the long term, cover crops incur seed, planting, termination, and labor costs to farmers while providing little to no short-term revenue. Short growing seasons and harsh winters in many regions make cover crop establishment difficult, resulting in persistent questions about their conservation efficacy and economic feasibility. Row crop farmers with livestock may graze cover crops to defray feed costs, but this increases the importance of cover crop establishment and biomass accumulation. We worked with four farmers in south-central Wisconsin to assess short-term ecological and economic dimensions of rotational grazing of cover crops and to demonstrate “real world” risks in Wisconsin row crop systems. Rotational grazing of cover crops in row crop operations did not appear to impact sensitive soil health indicators, but it did positively affect each farmer's bottom line in the project's first year. In the project's second year, cover crops did not establish well, and only one farmer had a positive economic benefit from grazing cover crops. Nonetheless, all four farmers are determined to plant and graze cover crops in future years. They reported not being discouraged by the “failures” but instead excited for the opportunity.