Cover Crops Make Cent$

You may have heard quite a bit about cover crops lately. But hardly anything about the economics of cover crop - Do cover crops cost or make you money? University of Guelph Ridgetown Campus Researchers Laura Van Eerd and Richard Vyn have teamed up to evaluate the economics of cover crops.

In a field trial at two sites, oats, cereal rye also called fall rye, oilseed radish and a mix of rye and oilseed radish were grown prior to sweet corn production. These were compared to a no cover crop control treatment.

At each site, all cover crops tested were as profitable as or more profitable than the no cover crop control. So after only using cover crops for one season, in the following year you can see a profit return.

Now, you might be thinking, yeah but, what costs did you use? We used the cost of seed and the cost of Roundup® to burning down the fall rye as well as the cost of custom drilling to plant the seed and custom application of the herbicide. These costs were compared to total revenues based on sweet corn yield and the average price of sweet corn, as reported by OMAFRA. Results at both sites indicated that cover crops were as profitable as or more profitable than no cover crop in sweet corn production.

It's not possible to pinpoint the best cover crop. At one site, oats had the highest profit margins and in the other site oilseed radish as well as rye were highest. So we have no clear winner between the cover crops, but none had lower profits than the no cover crop treatment.

Now you have some economic information to consider when planting a cover crop.