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Spring Madness

Soybeans sprouting through the low Carbon Intensity soil.

Hey everyone, and happy spring! I hope everybody is off to a successful planting season. It’s been hit or miss here recently on our home farm in Southeast Iowa with weather conditions for our own planting, but we are optimistic that the weather will stay on our side now!

As we think about the spring and utilizing our soil health systems, it’s important to keep in mind utilizing our tools as offense management tools, not just a throwaway. What I mean by that is if we got a cover crop growing out on your farm this spring, make sure you utilize that cover crop as part of your moisture management program, your soil-till program, your plant ability program, your herbicide program, and more. That cover crop can directly help you be more profitable if you manage it as an offensive part of your program. We have seen this help our farmers reduce herbicide costs, fertilizer costs, crop risk, and open up more of a window to plant.

On our own farm, we are putting this to the test. We planted most of our soybeans in mid-April and we had a great period of warm weather. We have cereal rye as our primary cover crop, and we planted our soybeans right into the growing cereal rye. We will be extremely patient with termination of that cereal rye with the plan being to wait at least a month after planting those soybeans before we terminate any of the cereal rye, and much of the cereal rye on our farm this year we will take it all the way to harvest as a relay crop here this July. That cover crop is a massive part of our agronomic program. It has helped cycle nutrients and release nutrients later on in the year, it suppresses weeds, it’s managing moisture and it’s helping us withstand cold nighttime temperatures. Keeping that cover crop as an offensive tool really helps us to prioritize getting it down well and it helps us to showcase how that cover crop is directly improving the bottom line on our P & L.

At Continuum Ag, we have a lot of exciting things happening, a lot of progress being made as a business, a lot of exciting events happening as well. I encourage you to check out the TopSoil® Summit and get registered, this will be a jam-packed event connecting sustainability-minded companies with farmers from throughout the entire country. We are also hosting a lot of webinars, be sure to check those out, we are talking about Carbon Intensity and other opportunities to monetize your sustainability story and put dollars in your pocket for the efforts you are making on your farm.

Check out those events, and we are looking forward to seeing you at them! Good luck with the rest of the spring, and stay safe!


Mitchell Hora
CEO & Founder // Continuum Ag


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