Pioneering Farmers Value Agronomic Performance of Cover Crops and Their Impacts on Soil and Environment

Abstract

Cover crops (CCs) have aroused a great deal of interest as a multifunctional measure to improve the sustainability of agriculture. Understanding farmers’ views are important for future farm-scale implementation. A farmer survey was carried out in Finland in 2021 with the aims to gather farmers’ views on agronomic performance of CCs, their environmental impacts and contribution to climate smart agriculture, and understand how farmers’ views on CCs differed depending on farm/farmer characteristics. The farmers’ sample was conventional and organic farms that had selected CCs as a registered measure in 2020. 6493 farmers were invited to answer a questionnaire with 18 statements (a Likert scale, 5 answer choices), and 1130 responded (17.4%). A Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel test was used to measure the strength of the association between ten characteristics of the respondents and 18 statements. Farmers considered CCs to have wide-ranging benefits for soil conditions. Only 21% of farmers agreed that CCs increase the need for nitrogen fertilizer use. 49% of farmers agreed that CCs reduce weed problems. Farmers mostly agreed (ca. 80%) that CCs reduce nutrient leaching and erosion. They were in general more uncertain about CCs’ contribution to climate change mitigation (53% agreed), adaptation (51%), and resilience (58%). In agri-environmental schemes subsidies for use of CCs should aim large-scale implementation with two important target groups: younger farmers (≤50 years) as they were slightly more skeptical than older ones and farmers with less diverse land use as they were more doubtful of benefits provided by CCs.

Finnish Farmers Feel They Have Succeeded in Adopting Cover Crops but Need Down-to-Earth Support from Research

“…In addition to 13 statements under the title "Your success with CCs?" analyzed in this paper, the survey included other main themes with 51 statements, all dealing with CCs [23,32,36,37]. The farmers had five answer choices for each of the 13 statements: 1 = fully disagree, 2 = agree, 3 = neither disagree nor agree, 4 = agree, and 5 = fully agree.…”

“…The response rate was close to that of the contacted farmers (i.e., 17.4% ± ~2%) for the regions, farm sizes, the shares of land devoted to different crop groups on a farm, or for organic and conventional farms (232 and 898 responses, respectively). Considering the farm types, cattle and pig farms were slightly, but not significantly, under-represented [23]. Based on a preliminary examination of the data, the answers of all the 1130 respondents were considered acceptable and were used for statistical analyses.…”

“…Farmers seemed to do better with CCs in the case that their land use was not cerealdominated (Figure 7), which may be attributable to limited experience in cultivating special, diversifying crops [32]. On the other hand, CCs were used especially on cereal farms with the likely aim of restoring the soil structure and condition [23]. Respondents were altogether more positive toward CCs when they were familiar with a high number of CC species (Figure 2), although their experiences did not vary greatly depending on CC groups: grasses, legumes, and special CCs (Figure 3).…”

“…The shares of the answers are shown within each bar except in the case of being <3. Reference [23] is cited in the Supplementary Materials.…”

“…Due to the multidimensional implications of integrating CCs into crop production systems [21], successful adoption calls for systems thinking [22]. In Finland, there is an ongoing learning and implementation period concerning the cultivation of CCs with the primary aim of gaining various benefits for both agricultural production and the ecosystem that Finnish farmers often appreciate [23].…”