This is the sugar beet report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the sugar beet growing season. Growing cover crops is not a new idea, and more and more farmers are making use of the benefits. But cover crops in sugar beet is more challenging. Anna Cates, University of Minnesota soil health specialist, has the latest research. Anna, tell us a little bit about your research.

I'm a soil scientist, and I'm a soil health specialist, so I'm interested in how different cropping systems change soil properties and also change the environmental benefits as well as the agronomic outcome. So what happens when we do things like reduced tillage or introduce cover crops into a system like sugar beet production?

Sugar beet is harvested pretty late in the season. Is there enough time for cover crops?

It's a challenge for sure to get cover crops into a sugar beet system. One really excellent window is to look at cover crops on prepile acres. Even if you get cover crops just in those strips of the field where you're harvesting early, then that can help slow down the soil that can move easily across bare fields in the winter. And so even just getting those strips down on the 10% of your acres that are prepile can make a big difference in the field. But if you are looking at after harvest seeding, sometimes growers do have good results if they drill rye in right after their sugar beet harvest. Sometimes growers don't wanna have another pass across the field after the beet harvest campaign, and so you might hire an airplane to do it. We've seen some success where you have aerial seeding going right before the defoliation pass, and then the active defoliation actually kind of incorporates the seed. So that can be really successful. You do need moisture, but your cover crops can emerge kinda shortly after the lifter goes through in that scenario.

That sounds like a lot of time and effort. Is it worth it?

Yeah. I think it is worth it. One way you can make sure that it's worth it to you financially is by looking for cost share from your local soil and water district or from the NRCS. These kinds of practices are of high interest to all of those cost share programs because they reduce erosion and they prevent losses of nutrients into our surface and groundwater. My lab has done some good research on looking at the wind erosion benefits of these cover crops planted after the prepile beets, and we see just dramatic reductions in the amount of sediment moving across the landscape. You know, a couple of orders of magnitude less dust is blowing when you have a cover crop out there. And we did that research in both winters with pretty heavy snow cover where not that much soil was blowing and also not that much cover crop was growing, it still slowed down the soil. In a winter where it's really open and you have a lot of time for cover crop growth in the fall, then obviously you'll see a bigger effect. But either way, you can definitely slow that soil down.

Anna, is there a way to use the cover crop?

Great question. We don't generally call it a cover crop if you're gonna end up using it for forage or for grain. But certainly, people with an integrated crop livestock operation will find some forage value in something like rye that they let go into the spring. You're probably not gonna have opportunity for fall grazing or harvest after beets, but in the spring, you could definitely find some forage value there.

Thanks, Anna. Our guest has been Anna Cates, University of Minnesota soil health specialist. This has been the sugar beet report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the sugar beet growing season.