Search

USDA Increases Crop Insurance Flexibility for Cover Crop Management

July 1, 2019

USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA), Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) have announced new policies within crop insurance that will provide added flexibility for managing cover crops, beginning with the 2020 crop year.

Can corn benefit from social distancing?

April 13, 2021

Alison Robertson, plant pathology and microbiology, discusses findings from INRC-supported research on potential benefits of spacing cereal rye cover crop plantings from corn crop seedings in “Corn and Soybean Digest.”   

Harvested winter rye energy cover crop: multiple benefits for North Central US

August 15, 2023

A publication in Bioenergy Research Letters by INRC Director Matt Helmers and others, reports findings of a model-based investigation on the potential benefits of growing winter rye as a cover crop as part of corn-soybean rotations in the North-Central Region of the U.S. They concluded that harvesting fertilized rye CCs before soybean planting in this area could reduce nitrogen loads to the Gulf of Mexico by 27% relative to no cover crops, while providing an estimated 18 million Mg yr−1 of biomass-equivalent to 0.21 EJ yr−1 of biogas energy content (3.5 times the 2022 US cellulosic biofuel production).