February - A 2007 View On Sustainable Ag

By Ron Morse

EVERYONE likes going to grandmother’s house because her food tastes great. Likewise, similar virtues are evident in grandfather’s farming practices, such as rotating cash crops with cover crops to improve yield and soil quality. The advice given in the 1908 cover crops article is as valid and timely now as it was almost a century ago.

Loss of soil organic matter and its associated soil erosion had become serious problems by the early 1900s in the U.S. To combat soil degradation, this 1908 article emphasized soil-building and economic benefits of planting winter rye and legume cover crops as part of a four-year crop rotation and that the “entire cover crop should be used.” The author also suggested using the entire cover crop for soil building was not an economic “waste” and the “yield of the succeeding cash crop would more than pay for it.”

Indeed, annual investment in growing cover crops during the off-season can increase in-season yield and profit from cash crops and long-term improvement of soil quality and the environment. Today, there is a growing consensus that using diverse crop rotations — including cover crops — and reduced tillage provides the advantages so succinctly outlined in this article.

Morse is a professor in the Department of
Horticulture at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA; morser@vt.edu