Location: Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center
Project Number: 6020-21500-001-020-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 30, 2024
End Date: Dec 31, 2025
Objective:
1. Advance expertise and scientific knowledge in cover crop technology through a cover crop grazing on-farm research.
2. Develop scientific knowledge and outreach to minority farmers and students in the areas of carbon sequestration, cover crops and conservation cropping systems.
Approach:
The research will be conducted on-farm in conjunction with a small black-owned farm that was founded in 2018. The farm consists of 205 acres with 103 acres devoted to pastureland that supports cattle, goats, lambs, chickens, rabbits and vegetables and the remainder supports long leaf and loblolly timber. A 10-acre field will be separated into quadrants that will allow for the investigation of 4 winter forage treatments. The treatments will consist of (1) conventional control: annual rye only, (2) mixture of annual rye and balansa clover, (3) mixture of annual rye and Persian clover, and (4) mixture of annual rye grass and a perennial clover. Heifers will be assigned to each of the treatment areas and will be maintained in that treatment area for the duration of the production or birthing time frame. After measurements are complete, statistical analyses will be performed to identify treatment differences. The data and information identified from the treatments will be linked to GIS-soil landscape models. Random samples will be collected for cross-validation.
