Cover Crop Breakthrough Promises To Revolutionise Production In Dry Areas

The introduction of a no-till planter that can plant cover crops in vine and tree rows is enabling farmers in the Olifants River Valley to take the benefits of cover cropping to an entirely new level. Glenneis Kriel reports on the planter’s development and the value of cover cropping in general.

For years, a number of farmers in the Olifants River Valley have been planting cover crops between vine rows to suppress weeds and build up soil health. But warm climatic conditions, in combination with low and erratic rainfall, ranging between 100mm and 150mm a  year and decreasing as low as 47mm two years ago, have prevented them from reaping the full benefit of this practice, and many farmers have given up the practice.

To salvage the situation, soil health expert Stoney Steenkamp collaborated with Piket Implemente to design and build an innovative planter that can plant cover crops on plant ridges. These cover crops have access to the dripper lines that irrigate the vineyards, and are planted near the roots of the vines, where they receive the most benefit.

The planter is light, reducing the problem of soil compaction.

WATER USE AND SOIL TEMPERATURE

Steenkamp’s objective with the machine is to enable farmers to use cover crops to suppress weeds, so they become less dependent on herbicides for weed management, and to ultimately improve the water-use efficiency of farms in the region.

“The idea is to promote the use of cover crops. The planter itself is merely an enabling tool, which can actually do a lot of harm when used to establish the wrong cover crop mixtures or monocultures,” he says.

When chosen correctly, however, cover crops can reduce water use by forming a thick blanket of mulch that reduces evaporation and buffers plants against temperature extremes, with soil temperatures being a few degrees cooler than ambient temperatures in summer, and slightly warmer in winter.

Besides this, the roots of the cover crops help to loosen and improve the soil structure, as well as health.