2024 June Stewardship Advocate

Jul 03, 2024

Iowa Shows Leadership in First Year of New National Cover Crop Program:

The Iowa Corn Promotion Board, Iowa Soybean Association, and the Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance are leading a statewide push toward a national cover crop goal of 30 million acres.

Three Iowa ag partners are celebrating a successful first year of Farmers for Soil Health (FSH), a national cover crop incentive program funded through a USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) Climate Smart grant.

Iowa, a top producer of corn and soybeans, recorded nearly 27,000 acres of cover crops in the first year of the program. That is out of about 80,800 acres nationwide with nearly 100 Iowa farmers enrolled. Both the numbers of Iowa acres and farmers led the nation in the first year of the FSH program.

Producers can receive up to $50/acre over three years for new cover crop acres. The sign-up period has begun for fall 2024 cover crops.

Click here to see more...

Video: What Happens When Pigs Adapt to High Soybean Meal Diets? - Gustavo Lima

In this special rerun episode of The Swine Nutrition Blackbelt Podcast, Gustavo Lima, PhD candidate in Animal Science at Iowa State University, discusses how grow-finish pigs respond to high soybean meal diets. He explains the initial drop in feed intake, changes in backfat, later adaptation, energy efficiency, amino acid utilization, and the rise in nitrogen excretion at higher inclusion levels. Listen now on all major platforms!

Click here to read the full research article: https://academic.oup.com/jas/article/...

“Once they got adapted to the diet, they can handle higher levels of inclusion of soybean meal.”

Meet the guest: Gustavo Lima / gustavo-lima-a9867127 is a PhD candidate in Animal Science at Iowa State University whose work focuses on swine nutrition, ingredient characterization, energy metabolism, caloric efficiency, and applied data analysis. With more than 15 years of experience in swine production across Latin America, Gustavo also brings expertise in environmental control, performance evaluation, barn ventilation, and grow-finish housing. Learn more from Gustavo Lima on The Swine Nutrition Blackbelt Podcast, available on all major platforms.