Cover Crops Field Guide Helps Growers Improve Soil, Water Quality And Yield

Nov 18, 2015

By Tracy Turner

A publication that teaches growers the advantages of using cover crops to improve soil health and crop yields has won several awards and is now in its third printing.

Red clover

The Midwest Cover Crops Field Guide, ID-433, helps growers learn how to improve the region’s water quality while improving soil health, increasing yields, lowering input costs and earning higher farm income, said Jim Hoorman, an Ohio State University Extension educator and an assistant professor studying cover crops, soil health and water quality issues.

The guide was collaboratively written in part by soil researchers and educators from the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at The Ohio State University. First published in 2012 and updated in 2014, more than 52,000 copies of the book have been printed and sold, Hoorman said.

The guide had 46 co-authors including Hoorman and fellow OSU Extension educators Rafiq Islam, Alan Sundermeier, Curtis Young, Sarah Noggle and Randall Reeder, as well as researchers from the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. They assisted educators and researchers from the Midwest Cover Crops Council, which includes members from several universities, including Ohio State, in revising the guide.

OSU Extension and OARDC are the outreach and research arms, respectively, of the college.

“This guide can offer really good insight to farmers on some of the benefits of using cover crops and how to grow them,” Hoorman said. “For those of us who helped to write the guide, the fact that so many farmers, growers and producers are using it is a validation and recognition of the good work that we are doing in this area.

“Hopefully the guide is helping to increase the use of cover crops and helping farmers improve their soils. In the newest edition, we’ve added 30 additional pages with more useful information on how to use manure with cover crops and herbicide carryover issues with cover crops establishment.”

In addition to other awards, the first edition of the guide also received the 2013 National No-till Conference Innovator Award. Some of the awards the second edition of the guide has received include: the 2015 National Association of County Agricultural Agents national publications finalist; and the 2015 American Society of Agronomy Excellence in Extension Award for a publication over 16 pages.

The Midwest Cover Crops Guide, second edition, is available for $5 and can be purchased from OSU Extension county offices and through the Midwest Cover Crops Council at mccc.msu.edu.

The guide is 161 pages and includes information on how to introduce cover crops into field crops production, common types of cover crops to plant, climate considerations when planting cover crops and seeding rates.

Source: purdue.edu

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”