The mild winter is causing cover crops to be much more vigorous than last year around this time, but when is it time to kill those covers?

Farmers interested in planting cover crops to improve soil health can now find information and tips in a new pocket guide produced by the Midwest Cover Crops Council and Purdue University.

Producers should make field repairs as needed and seed a cover crop to help protect the soil and start rebuilding soil life before the 2012 cropping season.

Trying something new and innovative is always easier when you can learn from someone else’s experience. For a small group of innovative Pottawattamie County farmers experimenting with cover crops, that someone else is Pete Hobson.

$50 million will spent over three years in conservation assistance to farmers and ranchers in priority areas along seven major rivers in five states that drain into the Gulf.

Part of the opportunity for me to recently present the “S.H. Phillips Distinguished Lecture In No-Till Agriculture” at the University of Kentucky was the chance to spend the day talking with faculty members and graduate students from around the world. Phillips was a pioneer in the early 1960s in getting no-till started on a commercial scale. And he would certainly be proud to know no-till has grown to an astounding 288 million acres today around the world.