Ag Policy Blog

USDA is spending a lot of time and resources working on issues such as cover (double) cropping and co-existence of biotech and non-biotech crops.

In his speech Thursday at the USDA Outlook Forum, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack took time to bring up both of those issues. In dealing with the consequences of last year's drought, the White House has created an administration-wide task force to look for ways to mitigate the effects, Vilsack said. USDA has done some standard drought responses such as opening up haying and grazing on Conservation Reserve Program land, but the department also wants to find new ways to generate needed livestock forage.

Whether it's called cover cropping, double cropping or multi-cropping USDA wants to find ways to get more cover on the ground after a farmer removes his or her main cash crops. Covers can not only help with conservation and improve soil health and also possibly produce revenue by creating another feedstock for livestock or renewable energy.

Vilsack talked in his speech about Ohio farmer Dave Brandt, who DTN has profiled and spotlighted in recent cover-cropping articles.

"Dave has got a no-till nutrient management system that he's put in place since the 1970s that involves multi-cropping and double-cropping. He tells us that this has increased the organic soil matter in his soil," Vilsack told the Outlook crowd. "It saves about $100 an acre on nitrogen. It's increased his corn yield 7 to 10 bushels an acre and his soybean yields 8%. That is something that ought to get everyone's attention, and at USDA, we ought to be looking at ways in which we can reduce the manmade barriers to multi-cropping, so that that can be another strategy for managing risk, recognizing that there are different types of multi-cropping, whether it's double-cropping or cover crops or an integrated crop-livestock arrangement or even agroforestry."

Vilsack said he began asking agencies more about what could be done for double cropping acres or cover cropping to create better soil health and conservation practices.

"What we learned from that discussion is barriers exist," Vilsack told reporters following his speech. "Market opportunities are not there. Often times, for that secondary crop there are not market opportunities. There are insurance complications that make it difficult to get the primary crop insured. There may be declining yields associated with the primary crop."

Vilsack said he has asked the various USDA agencies to come together to brief the secretary about some of the factors regarding why some producers choose to double crop while others do not.
"We have to do a better job communicating the benefits," Vilsack said. "There are absolutely some conservation benefits, there's no doubt about that."

Vilsack also talked about the work of the Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture, also known as "AC21." This is generally known as USDA's coexistence project to reduce conflicts between growers of biotech crops and non-biotech, or organic producers. Vilsack said farmers have the right to choose the kind of business operation that is best for them. Dealing with coexistence issues are difficult with Vilsack recognizing "that there are passions on all sides of this issue."

The AC21 Committee has put together a variety of recommendations and trying to find middle ground. Working through a process trying to reach consensus between biotech and organic philosophies, the AC 21 Committee produced a summary of its recommendations on USDA's website on Thursday. http://dld.bz/…

The secretary said USDA will be doing more research on coexistence so farmers could create stewardship or coexistence plans would know what practices work best. A conference on those issues will be held later this year, he said. The conference will be funded through a competition grant to bring in experts on topics such as gene flow.

Vilsack added, "We will continue to look at ways in which we can indemnify or compensate those who may have suffered an economic loss. We are going to have NASS basically review its data to get a better handle on how to price organic crops, because there is a premium associated with those crops, and they are, in a sense, sort of a different commodity, if you will, and some of the normal practices, the normal surveying techniques and so forth may not work quite as well for organics as they do for conventional agriculture. And that will give us enough information to be able to do a better job of understanding how to set up insurance policies and programs for these organic crops. "

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