Cover Crops (NRCS Code 340)
RIPE’s research details several conservation practices that deliver robust public benefits— including soil health, clean water, water conservation, wildlife conservation and climate mitigation — valued at more than $100 per acre or animal unit.
One of these practices is cover crops (NRCS code 340). Cover crops reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide additional environmental benefits valued at over $120 per acre per year.
We found that farmers who adopt cover crops provide over $70 in water quality benefits, over $20 in improved soil quality, $13 in water savings, and $7 in air quality benefits. They also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 0.25 metric tons per acre, which is about $5.
More About Cover Crops
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Managing a continuous cover of plants can help improve soil health and prevent erosion.
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Cover crops (CCs) have aroused a great deal of interest as a multifunctional measure to improve the sustainability of agriculture. Understanding farmers’ views are important for future farm-scale implementation. A farmer survey was carried out in Finland in 2021 with the aims to gather farmers’ views on agronomic performance of CCs, their environmental impacts and contribution to climate smart agriculture, and understand how farmers’ views on CCs differed depending on farm/farmer characteristics.
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Increasingly, farmers and even urban and backyard gardeners are realizing that cover crops are critical to their operations and gardens. Cover crops – plants grown primarily to benefit the successful growth of other future crops – help with soil erosion, improve soil health, crowd out weeds, control pests and diseases, increase biodiversity, and can bring a host of other benefits to your farm or garden, including increased profitability.
