Northeast Iowa explores ways to add small grains to crop rotation
Author
Published
10/20/2016
WAUKON, Iowa — Earl Canfield sees oats as a way to diversify his Dunkerton farm.
He has grown oats for two years. The first year, he and his family grew 32 acres of oats that yielded 90 bushels per acre with a test weight high enough to sell as food grade.
This year, they planted 50 acres. Of that, 12 acres were seeded with an alfalfa/fescue/orchard grass mix to provide hay in the coming years. The other 38 acres were straight oats.
Sara Berges, SWCD project coordinator, said Iowa used to be a top small grains producer, but acres have dwindled dramatically in the past 50 years. The aim of an August small grain workshop in Waukon was to begin rebuilding small grain infrastructure.
Berges points to Iowa State University agronomy professor Matt Liebman’s research. It showed although corn is grown less often in a three-year rotation (corn-soybeans-small grain), that combination is often higher yielding at lower cost due to the addition of nitrogen-fixing legumes such as clover with the small grain.
Read the full article on the Iowa Farmer Today website.
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