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Incorporating cover crops enhances no-till, builds yields, adds grazing accessibility, improves soil health for Cedar County farmer.

Curt Arens, Editor, Nebraska Farmer

October 5, 2015

3 Min Read

Jeff Steffen has been no-tilling his crop ground in northern Cedar County for over 20 years. However, in the past few years he has found a way to incorporate cover crops into his crop rotation to enhance his no-till systems, build yields, add grazing accessibility and improve soil health.

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Steffen is not afraid to try different things and test seed and practices on his farm. He has his own test plots for soybeans, oats and corn. He has experimented with raising cover crop seed on contract and for his own use. Because of his quest for information from his farm, Steffen has been able to develop what he believes to be a winning crop rotation that utilizes cover crops and legume crops to hold nutrients in the soil and save on commercial inputs for his corn crop.

For example, he planted field peas in one field in the early spring of 2014. He harvested the peas for seed in early July last year and drilled a cover crop mixture of turnips, radishes, peas, clover and oats. By last fall, the cover crop mixture had grown to at least three feet in height, Steffen says.

He grazed the cover crops with bred heifers, taking about half of the available forage and leaving the rest to catch snow and protect the soil through the winter months. This spring, he no-till planted corn on this same irrigated field at a population of 32,000 into the cover crop stubble.

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Over the course of this growing season, Steffen applied limited nitrogen to the field at a great savings in input costs. "I wanted to try an experiment to see what kind of yields we could get with only 120 units of nitrogen," Steffen says. Although he hasn't harvested the field yet, the corn was mature and yield checks looked like it would yield the same as his other irrigated corn. "There is very little residue left from basically what was a three-foot cover crop last fall," Steffen says. "It looks like it has been digested and the corn has used it up" by the end of this year's growing season.

Then, in late September this fall, he aerial seeded more cover crops including rye, triticale and rapeseed into the standing corn field. After receiving more than four inches of rain by the end of the month, growing rye was visible between the mature corn rows by the first days of October. "The plan is to plant soybeans in this field in the spring," Steffen says.

This was the result Steffen had been hoping for by incorporating cover crops in his crop rotations. This year he had cover crops growing at one time or another in100% of his crop fields. You can read more about Steffen's efforts toward diversity in crop rotations and what he is learning about incorporating cover crops into the system in an upcoming Nebraska Farmer print article. 

About the Author(s)

Curt Arens

Editor, Nebraska Farmer

Curt Arens began writing about Nebraska’s farm families when he was in high school. Before joining Farm Progress as a field editor in April 2010, he had worked as a freelance farm writer for 27 years, first for newspapers and then for farm magazines, including Nebraska Farmer.

His real full-time career, however, during that same period was farming his family’s fourth generation land in northeast Nebraska. He also operated his Christmas tree farm and grew black oil sunflowers for wild birdseed. Curt continues to raise corn, soybeans and alfalfa and runs a cow-calf herd.

Curt and his wife Donna have four children, Lauren, Taylor, Zachary and Benjamin. They are active in their church and St. Rose School in Crofton, where Donna teaches and their children attend classes.

Previously, the 1986 University of Nebraska animal science graduate wrote a weekly rural life column, developed a farm radio program and wrote books about farm direct marketing and farmers markets. He received media honors from the Nebraska Forest Service, Center for Rural Affairs and Northeast Nebraska Experimental Farm Association.

He wrote about the spiritual side of farming in his 2008 book, “Down to Earth: Celebrating a Blessed Life on the Land,” garnering a Catholic Press Association award.

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