Cover Crops: Finding Success

Making Your Farm More Resilient With Cover Crops

Cover crops are an essential tool for farmers who want to enhance soil health, improve water quality and boost their farm’s resilience. By integrating cover crops into your farming practices, you can reduce erosion and build organic matter, along with many other benefits.

Practical Farmers of Iowa and ADM re:generations™ have teamed up to help you get started with cover crops or scale up your existing cover crop acres. Read on for resources and tools to help you succeed with cover crops.

Why cover crops?

Watch the “Cover Crops to Improve Soil Structure and Water Infiltration” video below to hear farmers share stories of how covers have improved soil quality and protected their fields during times of heavy rainfall and times of drought. To learn more about cover crops, watch PFI’s “Cover Crops and Weed Control” video.

Want to watch more videos on cover crops? PFI’s “Practical Cover Croppers” video series showcases cover cropping practices and insights from a variety of farmers using a range of farm enterprises, from row crops to livestock to horticulture.

Watch “Practical Cover Croppers” on YouTube

ADM offers a variety of incentive programs for farmers looking to implement cover crops and other regenerative agriculture practices. Visit their website to learn more about their programs and resources and to enroll in their 2025 incentive programs. Your local ADM representatives can also share more about 2025 programs, or you can contact Jennifer Poling at 217-619-2010 or jennifer.poling@adm.com.

Participants in ADM’s programs are eligible for additional technical assistance from PFI staff. If you’re already involved in their programs, sign up for PFI’s technical support or call the PFI office at 515-232-5661 to connect with an agronomist.

Attend an event

Practical Farmers of Iowa offers a slate of farmer-led educational opportunities every year and this type of peer-to-peer learning allows farmers to gain real world knowledge about cover crops from other farmers.

Farmers host field days, speak at workshops and conferences and more.

Find an Event near you

Want more cover crop facts?

Participants in PFI’s Cooperators’ program have been researching cover crops for decades. Let their on-farm cover crop research trials guide your cover crop journey and answer frequently asked cover crop questions.

Check out these relevant reports:

Explore more Farmer-led research

Other resources to help you succeed

Sign up for PFI newsletters, “Practical Cover Cropper” and “Small Grains News,” for monthly insights on covers.
Read blogs on planting corn into a green cereal rye cover crop, building your own air-seeding combine and how seeding date and method can affect cover crop performance.
Enroll in PFI’s 2025 cover crop cost-share program.
Explore other cover crop resources, cost-share opportunities and more.
Review the economic value of cover crops study from Iowa Learning Farms.

Strips of cereal rye and hairy vetch growing in spring 2022. Photo taken in May.

Ready to start your cover crop journey?

Whether you are just getting started and looking to source seed or seeking some extra advice, our Find Cover Crops website can help.

Contact PFI

To talk to a PFI agronomist, call 515-232-5661.

For more information about our cover crop program, contact covercrops(at)practicalfarmers(dot)org.

For more information about on-farm research, contact Stefan Gailans at stefan.gailans(at)practicalfarmers(dot)org.