Penn State doctoral student Emma Rice, right, and Titusville-area farmer Monica Kerr, left, look at a cover crop test plot during the Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance's field day conference at Thiele Dairy Farm in Cabot. Farmers from as far as New York and Illinois attended the conference to learn about no-till farming practices designed to maintain soil fertility and manage runoff.

CABOT — Making soil more productive for farming by planting cover crops after harvest was discussed and demonstrated Friday at a Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance field day and annual meeting at the Thiele Dairy Farm.

Cover crops — buckwheat, flax, oats, sunflowers, radishes, rapeseed, rye and warm- and cool-season grasses — prime soil with nutrients that benefit corn and other summer crops, protect soil, inhibit grubs and allow earthworms to thrive, said guest speaker Rick Bieber.

Bieber is a 30-year farmer from South Dakota who spends half the year traveling out of the country talking to farmers about caring for their precious soil.

“We need to have our soil functioning properly,” Bieber told the gathering of more than 100 farmers, including some who traveled from Illinois, New York and Ohio for the field day.

“Soil is the skin of the Earth,” and it should be protected with cover crops and worked gently with no-till planting, he said.

Planting multiple species of cover crops, he said, adds a dynamic array of nutrients and more nutrients than fertilizers provide.

Allowing cattle to graze in fields improves soil health.

“Everything soil needs is in cows' guts,” Bieber said.

Soil with a proper biological balance allows protozoa to kill the eggs of plant-killing grubs, he said.

Sugar converters

Healthy soil converts simple sugars into complex sugars, and insects won't eat plants containing complex sugars. Conversely, he said, insects will consume plants that absorb simple sugars.He said healthy soil also attracts earthworms, which benefit corn by providing holes for roots to sink into and reach water.Bieber acknowledged that some farmers accept the lessons he learned from experience and from other farmers, but some are skeptical.“I'm trying to get you thinking...It works for me. It's been working for 30 years,” he said.Andy Gaver, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service's Butler field office, deployed a rainfall simulator to demonstrate how cover crops improve water infiltration into soil.The simulator showered two inches of rain in three minutes on boxes containing samples of a tilled field, a field with cover crops and other samples of farm fields.Most infiltration

The tilled field allowed the most runoff and the least amount of water infiltration, while the cover-crop field shed the least runoff and allowed the most infiltration.Gaver likened till farming to “shooting yourself in the foot and trying to run a race.”He said fields with cover crops capture 75% of the rain that falls.“We don't have a runoff issue. We have an infiltration issue,” Gaver said.In addition, he said letting cattle graze on harvested fields improves soil biology and allows better water infiltration.Part of a field on the farm was planted with different varieties of mixed cover crops that grew from seeds that were sent to the farm and planted in June.Bieber dug out samples of plants and their roots to show how cover crops without grasses in the mix allow soil to compact into horizontal plates that make it difficult for plant roots to grow downward.

Andy Gaver, a representative of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service, explains the benefits of no-till cover crop planting with a demonstration on a rainfall simulator showing how water runoff can be better managed to maintain soil nutrients. Farmers from around the region spent Thursday at Thiele Dairy Farm learning about no-till farming techniques through a field day with the Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance.

Farmer Rick Bieber describes benefits of different cover crops in order to maintain nutrients in soil and prevent water runoff during a field day with the Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance at Thiele Dairy Farm in Cabot.