Late last month, the National Working Group on Cover Crops and Soil Health released a list of ten recommendations for improving soil health and expanding the use of cover crops to achieve that goal. The Working Group rolled out the recommendations in a presentation to a variety of Washington D.C. based agriculture and conservation groups, including NSAC, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

NSAC strongly supports the expanded use of cover crops to improve soil health. We welcome the Working Group’s efforts to bring attention to these issues and applaud their recommendations.

The Working Group, which consists of 18 leaders from the agriculture and conservation community, was created following the February 2014 National Conference on Cover Crop and Soil Health held in Omaha, Nebraska. That conference brought 300 stakeholders together in person, with another 6,000 farmers and other stakeholders participating virtually.

Recommendations

The recommendations released by the Working Group are a follow-on to the Common Vision Statement on Cover Crops and Soil Health released in 2014 and signed by 42 diverse organizations.

Many of these recommendations are in-line with policies NSAC has been pursuing. We look forward to working with a diverse community of organizations to push many of these recommendations forward. We would also note, however, that we will also remain committed to moving forward other critical soil health practices and conservation systems beyond just cover crops.

AFRI Mini-Coordinated Agriculture Projects (CAP)

The Working Group recommends that the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) fund eight mini-CAP research projects on soil health and cover crops. The projects awarded these grants would be those that seek to answer the important questions that producers and crop advisors have about how to best utilize cover crops and improve soil health.

These multi-state regional projects would be interdisciplinary and include universities and non-profits, and focus on developing practical techniques to help farmers implement soil health practices and expand the use of cover crops.

ARS, NRCS, NIFA, and Private Sector Partnership on Cover Crop Seeds

This recommendation encourages USDA’s germplasm focused divisions within the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to work together and with the private sector to develop improved cover crop germplasm.

The recommendation calls on these USDA agencies to identify genetic lines within their stocks that have potential, scale up those stocks for testing, and then share that material with the private sector. The goal is to more quickly develop new varieties of cover crops that are regionally appropriate.

NSAC supports this recommendation provided that the resulting plant material remains publicly available to farmers and other researchers.