Using Livestock to Increase Cover Crop Profitability
Recently, I learned something about the fine art of cover crop grazing and how it can really help a row crop farmer. This is something I found to be almost akin to magic—grazing cover crops can significantly increase both the health of the soil and the chances of making a profit the first year of cover cropping, compared with using cover crops with no livestock grazing. This is because grazed cover crops can transform what would have been fallow crop land into economically productive land that supports livestock.
For most farmers just planting their first cover crop, there is a learning curve. Farmers must consider when to plant, when to terminate, and how to fit the cover crop rotation into that narrow window after the cash crop comes off. It may take a few years for a cover crop to benefit the farm financially, no matter how much good it is doing to the soil. But when cattle or sheep graze the cover (they can even terminate it before putting in the cash crop) you’ve got income from the livestock.