A new cover crop, Nuseed Carinata, set to launch this fall in the south, should pique the interest of farmers looking to boost their bottom line in between main food crops. Nuseed is targeting Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and the Carolinas for its debut in the U.S.

Besides building healthy soil, living roots are the tool to fix marginal lands. Salt-affected soils are an example of a hard-to-fix marginal land situation in South Dakota. There are annual and perennial plants that can tolerate more soil salts

The seed mixture options for full and late-season grazing could include cool-season cereals (oats, barley, triticale), warm-season grasses (sorghum-sudan, sudangrass, pearl millet), brassicas (turnips, radishes, kale), broadleaf plants (sunflowers, buckwheat) and legumes (forage peas, clovers, vetch).

Cover crops can offer a number of benefits to a cropping system including increased biodiversity, crop/livestock integration, erosion control, or water management. One of the greatest risks to cover cropping is failure to establish, and in North Dakota that often is the result of insufficient moisture. What can be done to reduce the risk of cover cropping?