At the first Soil Health Summit last year, I talked with Purdue University agricultural economist Dr. Wally Tyner about the need to quantify the economic benefits for farmers of using cover crops. This year, Chuck talked with him again about where they are at with that initiative.
“We’ve designed some new studies…to get statistically, economically valid comparisons on farm fields without cover crops and with cover crops,” said Dr. Tyner. “We just got funding for that project.”
Tyner says the new study will be recruiting about 70 farmers from 18 Indiana counties, one third that use cover crops and two-thirds who do not. “We’ll be getting five years of historical data on five fields and then three more years during the project – eight years of data – so that will give us over 2,000 field years of data and that should be enough for us to make valid statistical comparisons,” he said.
Listen to Chuck’s interview here: [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/shs16-tyner.mp3″ text=”Interview with Dr. Wally Tyner, Purdue University”]