Latest / The Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Podcast / Episode 74 | Cover Crop Conversations: Barriers to Entry
Transcript
- Episode 74 | Cover Crop Conversations, Barriers to Entry Norm Deets, Cover Crops Farmer John Pike, Cover Crops Farmer Brian Corkill, Cover Crops Farmer Rachel Curry, University of Illinois Extension 1) Episode 74 - Cover Crop Conversations | Barriers to Entry 2) Episode 75 - Cover Crop Conversations | Management Advice Todd Gleason: This is episode 74 of the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction podcast, Cover Crop Conversations: Barriers to Entry. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. Today, we'll hear the first of a two-part series. Each is an excerpt pulled from a July 2025 meeting led by Extension Agriculture and Agribusiness Educator, Rachel Curry. In the second program, we'll explore cover crop management advice with three actively involved farmers. Today, Rachel talks with those farmers—Brian Corkill, John Pike, and Norm Deets—about the issues they had and still face as it's related to deploying cover crops on the farm. Rachel Curry: What are or were your barriers to adoption of cover crops? Or why were you hesitant to adopt this practice? And what did you do to overcome those barriers? John, can we start with you on this one? John Pike: Yeah. I think one of the things that held us back in getting started sooner was just a lack of acreage to spread equipment out over. Mike Plummer, who is a former U of I Extension Agent in Williamson County, was sort of one of the pioneers to no-till and a lot of the cover crop adoption that is practiced in the state now. He was an extension advisor here, and I can remember going to meetings that he put on in the county and a bigger part of Southern Illinois as a kid. And while we didn't do a lot of those things on our farm, I can remember my grandpa saying to watch him because that was the way to think going down the road. And then I was fortunate enough to work with Mike in extension and then after his retirement while I have done other things, but been able to kind of watch what's going on and get things rolling on our farm. Came about later than I would have liked it, but I think in watching and trying a few smaller things through the years, we just knew that was the way to go. Rachel Curry: Brian? Brian Corkill: Probably the biggest barrier at the time when we were starting was lack of knowledge. So, actually through social media, connected with some guys to give me some guidance getting started. And then attending meetings and talking with people who had been starting to use cover crops and had experience with it, and getting some knowledge there to kind of smooth out some of the mistakes. Not that we still don't make some mistakes, but... And then I would say the other thing, probably another barrier is labor in the fall. Because we would like to... the plan every year is we're going to follow the combine and get cover crops seeded, and we do fly some on but not on everything. Having that labor and labor that you trust to do that has probably been another barrier. So we've been pretty good the last few years, but we've had several years in like 19, 20, 21, where maybe we didn't get everything cover cropped that we wanted to just because of lack of labor and having to wait until after harvest when we had some labor available to do it. So, maybe it needs to be a little bit more of a focus on that side of things. So I guess those would be kind of what I've seen as barriers in my operation. Rachel Curry: Norm? Norm Deets: As far as barriers to get in, I don't think there had any. It was a necessity that I needed to take the no-till and add the cover crops just from the standpoint where we're at, is I got some lighter soils and erosion was an issue. So especially on my bean ground in the fall, what do I got to do to save that erosion? So the mindset was just we've got to do it. I think some of the barriers that Brian has said is how do you get it on in the fall? We're a little bit further north, so the season gets shorter. How do you get it on? How do you get it established? And then the learning curves that go along with planting corn into—we use cereal rye. So every year there's a new issue. I wouldn't call them barriers, but there's new issues and it's a learning process. It's a continual learning process. Rachel Curry: Well, something that was brought up when we were talking earlier is about how essential it is to plan ahead. And so what is your planning process that you use to set yourself up for success when you're using cover crops? Norm Deets: I think the planning... I guess one other barrier I found going into it was our local co-op that does my fertilizer application and spraying application. I mean, they just... it was hard to get them to do some of the things I needed to do in the timing. So the pre-planning, I spend a lot of time in the winter with the co-op saying, "This is what we're going to use, this is how we're going to apply it, this is when we need to apply it." So spend a lot of time in the winter planning for the next year of how you're going to kill the crop, how we're going to supply nitrogen to the crop, and how we're going to go forward to that crop. In the summer, you spend your time as, "How am I going to get the cover crop established? When are we going to do it? The labor to get it done, the timing to get it done." So it's just, it's a constant planning, and you have to keep looking at the calendar and the timing of everything that goes with it. You gotta take as much risk out of that as you possibly can. John Pike: I would agree with Norm. The biggest change in being successful in adopting cover crops is the mindset and that planning where you're planning on a rotational aspect rather than a seasonal aspect many times. So what you do with your herbicide selection with your soybean crop this year has a big bearing on the potential success or potential problems with cover crops that you might try to seed in the fall that would be conducive to corn, but they can be successfully controlled or really hampered by the development of that in the fall. So we need to take a look at the whole rotation and have figured out what we need to do with the crop ahead of when we will plant a specific cover crop for a specific reason to make sure that we've got the path cleared for potential success and that we haven't created any self-imposed roadblocks. And I think that's one of the big things is that, you know, we know how to manage a lot of these things, but the process of thinking through that management progression is different in this type of a system than it is a conventional system. And that's the key in my mind to success. Rachel Curry: Brian, do you have anything you want to add? Brian Corkill: No, that I mean they pretty much spoke everything that was on the top of my mind. It is... and back to John's point, it is a different management mindset, and I think that's part of why guys are hesitant to go down this path because I don't know, I won't say it's farming is necessarily easy, but what we've been doing everybody's kind of got it figured out and this is what works most years. And to think about doing something completely different is I think a roadblock for wider adaptation of using cover crops. So, but yeah, both guys make all the points that I would make as far as your planning year round. You have to think about, as John said, you have to think about your herbicide choices for success for cover crops. And one of the things that we do to try to overcome some of the labor issues is we do fly on about not quite half of our cover crops, and there are challenges with that, but there are things that you can do to mitigate some of the risks with that. It isn't always successful, but we've had better luck the longer we've been doing it, we've had better luck doing that, and that opens up wider choices of cover crops, so more diversity. Whereas like what we seed after we harvest fields because it's getting late, we're kind of limited on what we can do for diversity up in this area. So we don't have as many choices as when we fly it on say late August, first few days in September. So there's a lot of moving parts and you have to be willing to make those management decisions. And they're not something that most of us have been used to in our farming careers. So... Rachel Curry: And we have a question in the chat and it's from Jordan. When it comes to cover crops here in Illinois, what are the biggest barriers holding farmers back from adopting them? And what should those just stepping into agriculture understand about cover crops and soil health to set them up for long-term success? Brian, you want to go first? Brian Corkill: So I think some barriers, and a lot of younger farmers now probably unless they happen to be able to take over a family farm or something like that, but if you're just starting out on your own, I think one of the barriers, and it's something that I struggle with, with landowners. So I don't know, I think education of landowners is important and try to get them bought into it. And have them be a little bit more understanding of what you're trying to accomplish. And then I think a big thing is finding a mentor or someone that you know that has experience. I think that can be a real key to overcoming some of the barriers because a lot of us have been doing a long time. We always still make mistakes because we're always still trying to do something new. But we know a lot of the mistakes that we made in the past, and we can avoid... we can help a new farmer avoid some of the things that we already know this isn't going to work, especially in localized areas. This isn't going to work, so don't even try it, here is what I would suggest you do. So some of those things I think can be very valuable to younger farmers or beginning farmers. Norm Deets: It's a very tough question. I think one of the big things to overcome if they're coming into a large family farm is to overcome, "Well, we've always done it this way." And I think one of the things I thought about is the larger the farm, the more hired labor. And it's tough to get hired labor to do what you want to do when it comes to soil regeneration. There's a lot of education that that would go into that. I think the mentor idea is a great idea, because being a young farmer getting in, you don't... they don't have probably the margin of error that maybe we had or blessed to have, because you just don't want to make some of the mistakes we made. It would be too tough on them economically. So I think again, the management of it. They're going to have to want to do a lot of management. Are they going into farming just to be an operator, or are they going into farming for the management standpoint? Because the management standpoint is huge, and I think it will be huge for their success, and I just wouldn't want them to see them go through the mistakes that we went through. I think they can eliminate those steps. That would be the advice to them. The other advice is, what do you want long term? Do you want your soils to be better? Do you want to grow the farms that you're farming? Make them better for the next generation? Or are you just farming to turn a profit and turn it over to the next guy and let him worry about it? I think that's a big decision. John Pike: Great comments from Norm and Brian. I'll add to that. I don't know that it's a barrier, but one of the biggest stumbling blocks that I see with cover crop adoption, especially from beginners, is that we think of a cover crop as just another input. And to think of that as an input that we can substitute like a grass herbicide in our soybean or corn crop is not that easy because we have to manage through that. And it's not that we have to change everything about our operation to make that work, but again, the thought process is a little bit different. And if we look at that cover crop as a system and how that can work well with everything else that we do and if there's a plan A, we need to have a plan B too, because moisture considerations and timing are going to be more critical than just the page on the calendar. Another thing back to Brian is to find good mentors that are doing things. And not that you're going to find somebody necessarily that you're going to adopt every practice that they do, because we're all in slightly different situations. But if we can connect with the right people, there's a lot of things that we can adapt with the right management to fit our operation in a way that it probably wouldn't work some place else. Rachel Curry: Another question that we had submitted is where does one begin if they would like to begin in regenerative farming? John Pike: I think again, the first step that I would recommend is to find somebody that's doing it that you can connect with. And those connections probably aren't going to be the most fruitful coming from Facebook, honestly. I think Facebook does one of the biggest disservices to a lot of agriculture endeavors and people that are enthusiastic about things, because I follow several of the pages that are involved with cover crops, and I'll see somebody ask a question about how to do this. And sometimes I know them or I know the area that they're from, and inevitably somebody will come in and they'll from out of the area and immediately say, "Well, you need to do X, Y, and Z." Well, that might be right in Kansas or Ohio or Canada, but it probably doesn't fit Central Illinois or Eastern Iowa, where the question probably came from. So you need to have a strong filter about where that information comes from and avoid asking questions on open forums like Facebook pages. There are some good ones that are closed if we can get involved with that through some of the mentorship programs. I think there's some value in that, but we need to be hesitant about that, but find a farmer that's doing it. And it might be... you might have to go 80 or 100 miles, but there's a lot of people around that are doing this thing. And I would say about anywhere that we stood in the state of Illinois, there's someone that's doing some aspect of cover crop and no-till management very successfully within 50 or 60 miles. It's just a matter of finding that, so I think that's the biggest key that I would recommend. Brian Corkill: Yeah, I think John hit it right on the head. And I do the same thing. And quite honestly, I did use social media when I first got started, but it was talking to people that I knew and knew that they had experience and also understanding that they may not be in my area, but it gives me an idea for me to get started. But I agree, I look at a lot of the same pages and you get people that comment from all over the place, "No, no, no, you need to do this." Well, yeah, you're two states away, it's not the same thing. So yeah, having those closed pages, but again seeking someone out in your local area that has experience and local being whatever that is, like John said, up to maybe 100 miles away. But finding someone that has experience, and us, like I would consider myself, I try to mentor people when they come to me with questions, realizing that what I do may not work for them whether it's from their current time trying to do stuff, whether they're starting, they've been doing it for a couple years, that makes a difference too because of their management expertise at that point. But then also realizing geographical differences as well. And trying to think through those points and making suggestions that I think could help them, even though that might not be where I'm at right now, but I've been through the gamut so far and I can have a relatively educated guess on things that they can try to get started. So... Norm Deets: I try to simplify it as much as possible. If the word regenerative ag came out, I want to do a regenerative ag program. That's a little intimidating. That sounds like something totally new. I know John and I talked about it a little earlier when we met last week. But I think the key is simple: what is your goal? When I got involved in this, my simple goal was to stop erosion. I've learned about all these things and people have taught me about all these things going forward, but if you go after that big regenerative ag thing, I think it's just too big. What are the simple goals you want to accomplish on your farm and do those and then see what happens with the rest of the implementation of regenerative ag. But I think you gotta start small and just go piece by piece, but have a goal. You always gotta learn. You gotta have an open mind and open ears, like in this first half an hour, I've learned stuff from John and Brian just because I'm in tune to what they're saying that I'll probably utilize. You always have to learn. Todd Gleason: Norm Deets is a farmer in the state of Illinois. He was joined during the July 2025 Cover Crops Conversations Farmer-to-Farmer event hosted by University of Illinois Extension by John Pike and Brian Corkill. It was hosted by Rachel Curry. Today we've been listening to an excerpt from the event. It is the first in a two-part series. Next time, the farmers will provide some cover crop management advice. The Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension under the guidance of Rachel Curry, Nicole Haverback, and Luke Zwilling. You may find it in many UI Extension podcasts online. Search "Illinois Extension podcast." I'm Todd Gleason.