The goal is to cover 40,000 acres in four years and expand the program to other parts of the Des Moines and Raccoon watersheds, which stretch into far northern Iowa. It costs about $40 per acre to seed the cover crops, Swanson said, but there are federal and state programs that offer money to farmers who start planting the crops. “It’s going to be one of the first ones in Iowa out there,” Swanson said.įarmers will pay a yet-to-be-determined fee to take part in the project. The new machine is capable of planting a variety of cover crops, including rye, oats, turnips and radishes. Previously, farmers have customized tractors used to spray fields, with their tall tires and collapsible booms that span many rows at once.
Members of the Central Iowa Cover Crop Seeder Project worked with John Deere in the past year to fine-tune a demonstrational version of the machine, he said, with the hope to make it more widely available. Swanson hopes to cover about 10,000 acres this year in Boone and Greene counties. Heartland Co-op has agreed to use the new machine to apply seed to fields in the Beaver Creek watershed, which feeds the Des Moines River. “Our public and private partners are critical to the success of every conservation project underway in Iowa,” said Mike Naig, the state’s secretary of agriculture. The city of Des Moines and Des Moines Water Works are contributing $75,000 and $25,000, respectively, and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship is contributing up to $350,000, depending on how much is planted. Polk County is using about $150,000 of federal pandemic relief money to help pay for the machine. “As soon as you see the corn harvested, you’re going to see that nice lush cover.”
“Our hope is for the machine to travel around and get some excitement,” said John Swanson, watershed management authority coordinator for Polk County. The seeds are often applied after harvest when the available time to take root is limited by the end of the growing season. It’s a cutting-edge technique that is expected to yield better success with the cover crops, which are used to reduce soil erosion and flooding, boost soil quality and help limit fertilizer and chemical seepage into rivers. Polk County will buy a $600,000 tractor that is tall enough to straddle rows of corn and apply cover-crop seed during the summer while the corn is still growing. A central Iowa partnership has emerged to encourage the use of cover crops in farm fields in the watersheds of the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers in an effort to boost the quality of the metro’s major sources of drinking water.
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