The University of Manitoba is encouraging Alberta farmers to participate in the online Prairie Cover Crop Survey this fall.
“Cover crops essentially are crops that are planted not as a cash crop but to provide other benefits to their system such as benefits to the soil or benefits to the environment,” Callum Morrison said.
After an annual grain crop is harvested, there is a period over the winter where the soil is bare, but plants can still be grown, and benefit the following year’s crop, such as increased infiltration, increased organic soil matter, and weed reduction.
“There’s another type of cover crop that people use where they take either their whole field or part of their field out of production for a year to grow a full-season cover crop, that’s generally to combat compaction problems, or increase nitrogen,” Morrison said.
“For Alberta, this is really loved because at the end of the year, you’ve had all this crop growing benefiting your soil, you can put on your livestock and graze all that down. Nutrients from livestock waste will stay on the field, and continue to improve the soil,” he said.
Any Alberta farmer can fill out the Prairie Cover Crop Survey, as the ultimate goal of the survey is to create a source of information that farmers can use if they are avid cover crop users, or are interested in planting a cover crop, to know what other farmers around them are doing.
“There hasn’t really been a source of information where farmers can go to get information on how other farmers are using cover crops. We want to make sure farmers have access to unbiased information, so they can make their own decisions,” Morrison said.
“It’s not there to encourage cover crop usage, it’s there to present facts of cover crops such as where they are grown, how they are grown, the motivation, and challenges. It won’t tell them what to do, but it will give them context,” he said.
All of the information collected will be compiled into a 2020 report and given to any farmer who wants to use it.
“We want to be as specific as we can to the individual farming groups because farming in the parries is so diverse. If farmers really want to get the most out of this survey, they need to take part and tell us what they are doing,” Morrison said.
“I’ve tried to be as inclusive as I can, I’ve gone down to some niche cover crops where we might have had only a few respondents,” he said.
Morrison believes now is the perfect time to create a source where farmers can go to get information on cover crops, as cover crops are becoming more popular in the prairies.
“Up until recently, it was really niche, it’s becoming more popular, but it’s still a minority of farmers. A lot of farmers are considering it, which is why I think this is the perfect time to do this,” Morrison said.
“Any farmer who wants to take part in this, it’s really for their benefit entirely,” he said.
Morrison has found that cover crops are being used as far north as there is still agriculture, counties near the southern Alberta border, and Rocky View County.
“It may be niched, but they appear to be grown everywhere, some areas more than not, but also by a huge variety of farmers. It’s not just annual grain farmers,” Morrison said.
Morrison is anticipating the 2019 Prairie Cover Crop Survey will be released to farmers in late November.
“This year’s survey is going to be a lot more comprehensive in the sense that we’re asking a few more questions, and we also included the people who are thinking about growing a cover crop,” Morrison said.
“This will paint a much fuller picture of what’s happening,” he said.
For more information, or to participate in the Prairie Cover Crop Survey, please visit, https://sites.google.com/view/prairiecovercropsurvey/home.
