Episode 74 | Cover Crop Conversations | Barriers to Entry

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 Dietz about the issues they had and still face as it's related to deploying cover crops on the farm.

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?

Yeah. I I think one of the things that that held us back in getting starters sooner was just a lack of of acreage to spread equipment out over Mike Plummer, who's 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 that is practiced in the in the state now. He was the extension adviser here and I can remember going to meetings that he put on in the county and and a bigger part of Southern Illinois as a as a kid and while we didn't do a lot of those things on on our farm, I can remember my grandpa saying that watch him because that was the thing that the way to to think going down the the road and then I was fortunate enough to work with Mike in extension and then after his retirement while I was have done have done other things but enable to kind of watch what what's going on and get things, the ball 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.

Brian?

Probably the biggest barrier at the time when we were starting was was lack of knowledge. So actually through social media, connected with some guys to, to give me some guidance getting started and then attending meetings and, and talking with people who, who had been, you know, starting to use cover crops and, or had experience with it and, 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 gonna follow the combine and get cover crop 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 nineteen, twenty, twenty one where maybe we didn't get everything cover crop 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.

Norm?

As far as barriers to get in, I mean, I don't think there were, I 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 have some lighter soils and erosion was an issue. So especially on my bean ground in the fall, what do I gotta do to save that erosion? So the mindset was this, we've got to do it. I think some of the barriers that Brian has said is how do you get it on 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 it's a learning process. It's a continual learning process.

Well, something that was brought up when we were talking earlier is about how essential it is to 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?

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, it was hard to get them to do some of the things I needed to do in the timing. So the pre planning, I have to spend a lot of time in the winter with co ops, 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 is how am I going to get the cover crop established?

When am 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, you have to keep looking at the calendar, and the timing of everything that goes with it. You got to take as much risk out of that as you possibly can.

John?

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 within 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 of that in the fall. So we need to take a look at the 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 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 and that's the that's the key in in my mind to success.

Brian, do you have anything you want to add?

No. I mean, they pretty much spoke everything that that was on the top of my mind. Is in back to John's point. It is 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, you know, what we've been doing, everybody's kinda got it figured out and this is what works most years. And and to think about doing something completely different is I think a roadblock for for white wider adaptation of using cover crops.

So, but but yeah, but both guys make all the points that I would make as far as you know, you're you're planning year round, you have to think about, as John said, you have to think about your herbicide choices for success for cover crops. One of the things that we do it for to try to overcome some of the labor issues is we do fly on about, you know, not quite half of our cover crops. And there are challenges with that, but, you know, there are things that you can do to mitigate some of the risks with that 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 getting late we're in the year 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 there's a lot of moving parts and you have to be willing to to make those management decisions. And they're not something that most of us have been used to in our farming careers, so.

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 would, or 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?

So I think some very, 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, think one of the barriers and it's something that, you know, I I as I said earlier, I I do basically the same thing on all our farms, whether it's owned or rented. But I do find a struggle with landowners. So So I don't know. I think educational landowners is important and try to get them bought into it and 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 gonna work, especially in localized areas. This isn't gonna work, so don't even try it. Here's what I would suggest you do. So some of those things I think can be very valuable to younger farmers or beginning farmers.

Norm? 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 wanna do when it comes to soil regeneration. There's a lot of education that would go into that.

I think the mentor idea is a great idea because being a young farmer getting in, they don't have probably the margin of error that maybe we had or were 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 gonna have to wanna 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 see them go through the mistakes that we went through. I think they can eliminate those steps. You know, 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 you'll turn it over to the next guy and let him worry about it? I think that's a big decision.

Great comments from Norm and Brian. I'll add to that. I don't know that it's 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 on the calendar another thing back to to Brian is to find good mentors that are doing things and and not 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 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 someplace else.

You gotta have 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.

Another question that we had submitted is where does one begin if they if they are, would like to begin in regenerative farming?

I think, again, it goes the the first step that that I would recommend is to find somebody that's doing it that you can connect with. And those connections probably aren't gonna be the most fruitful coming from Facebook, honestly. I think Facebook is the is is one does one of the biggest disservice to a lot of agriculture, endeavors and and people that are enthusiastic about things because I follow several of the pages that are involved with cover crops, and I'll 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 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 you you know, you might have to go 80 or a 100 miles, but there's a lot of people around that are doing this thing. And I I would say about anywhere that we stood in the state of Illinois, there there's someone that's doing some aspect of, cover crop and no till management very successfully within fifty, fifty or 60 miles.

It's just a matter of finding that. So I think that's the biggest key that I would recommend.

Yeah, I think John hit right on the head and I do the same thing. And quite honestly, did use social media when I first got started, 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 they get it was an idea for me to get started. But 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 you know, local being whatever that is, like John said, up to maybe a 100 miles away, but finding someone that has experience and and and us, like I would consider myself, I try to 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, or 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 that 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 can have a relatively educated guess on things that they can try to get started, so.

I try to simplify it as much as possible. If you know, the word regenerative ag came out, I want to do a regenerative ag program. That's a little intimidating. That, mean, 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, you have to have a goal, 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 got to start small and just go piece by piece, but have a goal.

Norm Dietz 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 Habberback, and Luke Zwilling. You may find it in many U of I Extension podcasts online. Search Illinois Extension podcast. I'm Todd Gleeson.