What You Need to Know About Managing Soil Quality and Water Retention on Your Farm

Cover crops are off-season crops that you grow between the harvest and the planting season of your cash crop. They offer a great many benefits, including preventing soil erosion, managing soil fertility, managing soil quality and water retention, and suppressing weeds, pests and diseases in your fields. They can also create forage for your livestock. If you’re leery of investing time and finances into cover crops, since they won’t likely yield direct income, take a closer look at their benefits.

Managing Soil Quality

Maintaining the quality of your soil is important if you want to create optimal conditions for your crops to thrive. Cover crops enhance quality by increasing organic matter levels through the input of cover crop biomass over time. Increased organic matter improves the structure of the soil, as well as its capacity to retain water and nutrients.

Managing Soil Water Retention

Cover crops reduce the amount of water that could drain off your fields and threaten waterways and ecosystems downstream. The roots of the crops create pores in the soil and therefore habitats for micro-fauna, as well as increased paths for the infiltration of water—which can improve overall water storage.

In an article published in the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan in late June, one farming expert praised the benefits of planting cover crops. David Ollila, a sheep farmer in Newell, South Dakota and a Soil Health Specialist for the South Dakota Soil Health Coalition said, “Soil heath practices like no-till and cover crops are a game changer on these marginal lands in western South Dakota.”

Ollila said that, in addition to providing nutritional benefits to soil, the increased organic matter of cover crops allows for an augmented soil water holding capacity.

The farmer explained that every 1 percent of cover crop organic matter allows his soil to hold 20,000 gallons of water per acre. “Instead of removing that with haying,” he said, “cover crops build it.”

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