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Profitable Rotation, Cover Crops Reduce Erosion on Hilly Farm
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A SARE producer grant helped Allen Matthews, pictured with wife Martha, daughter
Alissa and son Adam, prove that a new vegetable and grain rotation incorporating
cover crops earns $848 more per acre.
– Photo by Rich Fee, Successful Farming |
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When Pennsylvania grower Allen Matthews received a federal conservation
plan that spelled out a seven-year rotation of vegetables, small
grains and hay, he was dismayed. The rotation, 80-feet-wide contour
strips on his steeply sloped farm, seemed both unprofitable and
bad for his erodible soil.
Rather than concede, Matthews decided to research the alternatives. In 1996,
he received a SARE grant to test whether growing three years of vegetables –
peppers, pumpkins and sweet corn intercropped with cover crops – followed
by a year of clover, would control erosion. Growing high-value vegetable crops
more frequently than grains and hay would earn greater profits, and Matthews
wanted to measure how much.
“The seven-year rotation would have allowed us to grow vegetables only
once every seven years, and we’re a vegetable farm!” he said. “What
led us into on-farm research was practicality: We wanted to keep our farm operating.”
With help from his local soil conservation district and NRCS field staff,
Matthews created a five-acre test on the hillside of his 150-acre farm near
Pittsburgh. On half the slope, he grew 80-feet-wide strips of the crops designated
in the seven-year plan. On the other, he grew vegetables in narrow rows inter-seeded
with three types of clover.
To measure soil loss, they dug diversion ditches midway down the slope and at
the bottom. The ditches caught soil and collected runoff on the 15-percent grade.
The findings were significant. Matthews’ soil loss on his alternative
rotation reduced erosion, measuring just 10 percent of what NRCS allows on farms.
“We demonstrated that by doing alternative practices, we could still use
the four- year rotation,” he said.
Matthews planted peppers in narrow double rows, seeding clover in between
as a living mulch. Not only does the clover blanket the soil and reduce erosion,
but it also shades out weeds and fixes nitrogen. He allows the field to remain
in the cover crop for the subsequent year. Then they plant sweet corn.
After keeping records of labor and input costs, Matthews discovered he earned
$848 per acre more in the “sustainable” plots, which, when multiplied
by the 2.5-acre test plot over five seasons, totaled $10,000.
“It really clarified the profit per acre for different crops,” he
said. “After our records showed us how intense [the labor requirements
are for] sweet corn compared to pumpkins and peppers, we tripled our pumpkin
acreage.”
Matthews also credits the research project with pointing the family toward
direct- marketing their produce. Assembling records of costs and returns pointed
out how little he earned in the wholesale market. “We’d drive three
hours, round-trip praying they’d buy something so we’d get something
out of it,” he recalled. Now the family retails their crops at their farm
as well as Pittsburgh-area restaurants, farmers markets and grocery stores,
much of it through a farmer marketing cooperative.
Editor’s note: Today, Matthews’ father and brother manage most
of the production while Allen Matthews is “on leave” from his farm,
acting as research coordinator at the Center for Sustainable Agriculture at
the University of Vermont. His main role is to advise farmers about starting
alternative enterprises.
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