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Fred Yoder in Ohio plants rye and winter peas he never harvests. Larkin Martin in Alabama plants radishes she’ll never eat. A.G. Kawamura in California plants barley that rots in the fields.

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Each is part of a small but growing movement to bring back an ancient agricultural practice called cover cropping that was once used to rejuvenate soil but now also likely comes with the added benefits of both mitigating climate change and protecting against its ravages.

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It’s increasingly getting a push from Department of Agriculture programs and even companies that buy commodities. But mostly, farmers say it saves them money and protects their land.

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“Our soils keep getting better and better. You take a shovel out and dig deep down and you see the earthworms and the absence of a hard pan. That soil is just mellow all the way through,” said Yoder, a fourth-generation family farmer in Plain City, Ohio.

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For him, planting rye in his fields after he’s harvested his cash crops of corn and soybeans is no altruistic effort. It’s about economics and making his farm profitable.

“My biggest driver is trying to save money,” he said. “I’ve cut our fertilizer use by 20%, we’re skipping a herbicide application and my fields hold more water.”

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Cover cropping is no panacea to the many struggles farmers face as they operate within the razor-thin margins of agriculture. It can be costly — as much as $35 an acre, takes several years to really make a difference, requires new timing and sometimes new equipment and can increase pest infestations.

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But after a few years, fields planted in cover crops store thousands more gallons of water than bare fields during torrential rains, resist weeds' encroachment more, hold together better against erosion, survive droughts better and capture more carbon in their soils.  Read More

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