Strategies to increase cover crop adoption

Historically, cover crops were valued for reducing soil erosion, providing nitrogen for non-leguminous crops, conserving soil nutrients, and improving soil physical properties (Rogers and Giddens 1957). As chemical nitrogen became available after development of the Haber-Bosch process and national and global transportation systems developed for long-distance movement of other plant nutrients, the role of cover crops for maintaining soil nutrient stocks became less critical. In the last four decades, there has been renewed interest in cover crops as a partial solution to water quality degradation associated with intensifying agricultural production (e.g. Hargrove 1991), especially the leaching of nitrate (Meisinger et al. 1991; Staver and Brinsfield 1998; Kladivko et al. 2014). More recently, cover crops have moved to the forefront as a tool to build soil health and productivity, especially in areas with degraded soils or limited resources (Blanco 2023). As the threat of climate change has become more apparent, cover crops are recognized as a possible tool for making production systems more resilient and as a two-pronged mitigation strategy that can help reduce agriculture’s carbon footprint by increasing soil carbon storage and reducing fossil fuel–intensive nitrogen inputs in both temperate and tropical regions (Tellatin and Myers 2018; Delgado et al. 2021). Cover crop types and potential benefits are covered in depth in earlier chapters in this volume. Increasing the cumulative benefits of cover crops will depend on increasing cover crop implementation which will be the focus of this chapter.