The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has identified four basic principles or approaches for maintaining and improving soil health:
- Keep the soil covered as much as possible
- Disturb the soil as little as possible
- Keep plants growing throughout the year to feed the soil
- Diversify crop rotations as much as possible, including cover crops
- Download this fact sheet (PDF). This fact sheet is part of the Ecosystem Services from Cover Crops fact sheet series.
Farmers can support these principles by using cover crops, which are conservation plantings of fast-growing annuals such as rye, clovers, vetches and radishes. Cover crops protect and improve the soil when a cash crop is not growing. In the case of summer commodity crops like corn and soybeans, cover crops can keep the soil covered in fall, winter and early spring. They make it easier to use no-till or other conservation tillage approaches that disturb the soil less, and they help with weed control. Plant diversity is helpful for soil organisms because it gives them a greater variety of food sources, and cover crops are an easy way to diversify a crop rotation that may otherwise see only one or two crops grown in a field. Adding cover crops to a rotation can greatly increase the portion of the year when living roots are present for soil organisms to feed on.
10 Key Impacts of Cover Crops on Soil Health
Besides contributing to the four basic goals or principles for soil health, there are a number of specific ways that cover crops lead to better soil health and potentially better farm profits.
1. Cover crops feed many types of soil organisms
Most fungi and bacteria that exist in the soil are actually beneficial to crops. Many of these soil fungi and bacteria feed on carbohydrates that plants exude (release) through their roots. In return, some fungi and bacteria will trade other nutrients, such as nitrogen or phosphorous, to the crop roots. While cover crops directly feed bacteria and fungi, many other soil organisms eat the fungi and bacteria, including earthworms and arthropods (insects and small crustaceans like the “roly poly”). Thus cover crops can help support the entire soil food web throughout the year.
2. Cover crops increase the number of earthworms
Earthworms are usually the most visible of the many organisms living in the soil. Cover crops typically lead to much greater earthworm numbers and even the types of earthworms. Some earthworms, like nightcrawlers, tunnel vertically, while other smaller earthworms, like redworms, tunnel more horizontally. Both create growth channels for crop roots and for rainfall and air to move into the soil.
3. Cover crops build soil carbon and soil organic matter
Like all plants, cover crops use sunlight and carbon dioxide to make carbon-based molecules. This process causes a buildup of carbon in the soil. Some of that carbon is rapidly cycled through the many organisms in the soil, but some eventually becomes humic substances that can gradually build soil organic matter. A higher level of soil organic matter improves both the availability of nutrients and soil moisture for crops.
4. Cover crops contribute to better management of soil nutrients
By building soil organic matter, cover crops can gradually impact the need for some types of fertilizer. Just as important to nutrient management is the way cover crops can scavenge or collect any nutrients left at the end of a growing season, such as nitrogen left in the field after corn is done growing. The cover crop will hold that nitrogen rather than letting it escape into tile lines leading to rivers and lakes or drain away into groundwater. Eventually that nitrogen will be released the next season to help the next year’s cash crops.
5. Cover crops help keep the soil covered
When it rains on bare soil, the soil is much more likely to erode, form an impermeable crust and then overheat in summer when exposed to direct sun. Some bare soils can reach 140 degrees, hot enough to kill soil organisms and stress the crop from both heat and excessive soil moisture evaporation. The residue of a cover crop like cereal rye can protect the soil while cash crops are getting established and keep it from getting too hot.
6. Cover crops improve the biodiversity in farm fields
Generally, the more plant diversity in a field and the longer that living roots are growing, the more biodiversity there will be in soil organisms, leading to healthier soil. Growing mixes of cover crops or adding a few different cover crop species to an overall crop rotation—such as cereal rye before soybeans, and oats, radishes or crimson clover before corn—improves diversity. Many Corn Belt commodity farmers are adding a third cash crop to their rotation, usually a small grain such as wheat, and then using the earlier harvest of wheat to grow a more diverse mix of covers for several months. They sometimes graze those cover crop mixes for extra profit and because animal manure benefits soil biology.
7. Cover crops aerate the soil and help rain go into the soil
It’s not just earthworms that open up soil channels for rain, but also the roots of the cover crops themselves. This is particularly the case where soil disturbance is minimal from tillage. The extra rain that gets into the soil instead of running off can make a big difference for crop yields, such as in mid-to-late summer in the Midwest, when the rain can come fast in thunderstorms and be followed by long dry spells. The extra aeration created by cover crop roots and earthworms also benefits crop roots and other soil organisms.
8. Cover crops reduce soil compaction and improve the structure and strength of the soil
The typical solution to compaction from heavy farm equipment has been more tillage, but that provides only the briefest of benefits while compounding the problem in the long term. Excess tillage destroys soil structure, while cover crops and the soil organisms they feed create the glue (glomalin) that binds soil particles together, leading to better soil aggregation and strong soil structure. Research has shown that cover crops (with an assist from earthworms) help loosen compacted soil even more effectively than subsoiling equipment, which takes a lot of diesel fuel. A field with cover crops and minimal tillage, or better yet no-till, will lead to much better soil structure without compaction issues.
9. Cover crops make it easier to integrate livestock with field crops
Beef cattle and other livestock are usually kept in pastures and out of crop fields, which has some conveniences but is not ideal for soil health. Think of buffalo herds foraging on prairies and you can see how natural systems evolved to have an integration of plants and grazing animals. The manure from livestock grazing on cover crops in a grain field can be beneficial for building organic matter and soil health. It is also a great way to get immediate profit from cover crops, as certain cover crop species can be very high-quality forage in late fall or early spring.
10. Cover crops greatly reduce soil erosion and loss
On many fields that have some slope to them, half the topsoil has already been lost from the days when they were first farmed. The future success of farming and our food supply depends on keeping the topsoil we still have, and cover crops are exceptional at helping stop erosion. Using no-till with cover crops can reduce erosion to a tiny fraction of what it would otherwise be in a conventional corn and soybean system. Even with some light tillage, a field with cover crops is still much better protected, especially with winter annual cover crops like cereal rye.
About Soil Health
Soil health is a hot topic these days, one that is justifiably receiving considerable attention from farmers and their farm advisors. Whereas in the past, soil testing and evaluation focused more on chemical and physical measures, new research has shown that the biology of the soil is very important to its overall health and productivity. An incredible diversity of bacteria, protozoa, arthropods, nematodes, fungi and earthworms create a hidden food web in the soil that affects how crops grow, how soil nutrients are cycled and whether rainfall is quickly absorbed into the soil and stays where crop roots can access that moisture.
Summary
Methods of improving soil health come back to the core principles identified by NRCS, including a greater diversity of plants, keeping the soil covered, having living roots in the soil throughout the year and disturbing the soil less. As we learn more about soil biology, it’s clear that even modest use of cover crops makes a big difference for soil health. Further information on cover crops, including publications and videos of farmers talking about cover crops and soil health, are available from SARE at sare.org/covercrops. More information and fact sheets on soil health are available from NRCS and from the Soil Health Institute.