HOW TO BREAK WITH TRADITION

A decade of growing cover crops helped this farmer reduce subsoiling and commercial input application.

- Raylene Nickel 

Despite his adoption of no-till and cover crops, subsoiling was a practice Jason Carter never questioned. Like many farmers in his region, the Eastover, South Carolina, corn, wheat, and soybean grower found spring subsoiling necessary to break up "the hardpan caused by earlier years of tillage," he says.

However, lush cover crop growth in 2014 his second year growing cover cropsfoiled his plans at corn-planting time and changed his views on subsoiling.

"As I'd done before, I intended to subsoil and plant all in one pass," says Carter, "but because of the lush cover crop, I couldn't get enough traction to pull the subsoiler."

He made only one subsoiling pass through the field. Then he dropped the subsoiler and simply no-tilled into the green cover.

"At the end of the year, there was no yield difference between the two field treatments," he says.

He decided to drop the practice, but in 2015 a historic rainfall severely compacted soils and caused him to subsoil again out of necessity.

Nevertheless, his whole-farm adoption of cover crops has let him use the practice sparingly while reducing inputs to the barebone levels that set him apart from the norm and put him in demand as a presenter at farm conferences and field days.

Reducing inputs while maintaining yields, Carter named a Soil Health Champion by the National Association of Conservation Districts grows non-GMO crops on 1,000 acres, with 400 acres irrigated. He has planted a cover crop on every acre annually for the past 10 years. Reducing commercial inputs while maintaining yields is key to the profitable farm economics that drive his commitment to regenerative agriculture.