David Brandt may like the nice, green color his fields take on after one of his cover crop mixes emerges. But he also likes to see another kind of green — the color of money.

This bottom-line view of cover crops became a habit starting in the 1970s and 80s, when he was working mostly with red clover. Through strip trials he found that it only provided him 60 pounds an acre of nitrogen (N).

“I’m kind of a greedy farmer. If I plant something, I want to make some money — so our cover crops have to make money also,” Brandt says. “I didn’t feel getting only 50-60 pounds of N was enough to justify what we were trying to do. We kept looking for things that would produce more N.”

Three-Way Rotation is Key

Brandt’s goal is to get 100% of his 1,150-acre farm near Carroll, Ohio, covered with some kind of cover crop. He’s hit about 90% of acres the last 3 or 4 years.

He’s turned this bottom-line approach to evaluating covers into a science…