Filling Winter Fallows with Small Grains Regenerates our Soil and Creates High-Quality Feed

So much opportunity exists to create win-win solutions for farmers, eaters, and our shared climate when we look for the spaces and times when soil sits bare and figure out how we could cover it with living plants. To me, this process of bio-intensification holds the most promise to mitigate so many of our agricultural challenges. Winter annual crops like small grains and canola diversify and bio-intensify typical corn-soy rotations and solve everything from farm-scale headaches like herbicide-resistant weeds, to regional issues like the increasingly frequent extreme rain events that have plagued the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic in recent years and impede spring planting, to macro-scale global challenges like climate change. That’s why I was so excited to get involved with the Sustainable Food Lab and their partners at the Practical Farmers of Iowa to help advance small grains in the corn belt.

Starting with a learning journey in 2016 to Iowa grain and livestock farms, the coalition of researchers and CPG companies has been tackling the agronomic and market barriers to greater adoption of small grains. Buoyed by additional support from an NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant awarded last year, the group has made great strides in quantifying the opportunity and benefits of greater small grain utilization in animal feeds.

So, why small grains? As winter annuals, small grains fill a niche left bare in typical corn-soy rotations. Since both corn and soy are summer annuals, farms that only grow corn and soy have nothing growing in their fields for up to 8 months of the year. During that fallow time, their soil loses carbon to the atmosphere, is vulnerable to erosion, no plants capture carbon via photosynthesis, and no crop produces income for the farmer. Seems like a no brainer to add something, right?

Unfortunately, things are rarely that simple. Small grains can be difficult to get established after corn or soy harvest in many regions with short falls, or in years where it cools off sooner than expected. And, for all their benefits in soaking up spring rains and drying out soils to enable planting, they delay planting and preclude use of full season bean varieties. Further, with their lower yield potential than corn and lower value than soy, farmers can’t afford to reduce an acre’s income potential to a single small grain harvest. 

Beyond those timing challenges, there are also infrastructure and market barriers that make growing small grains less attractive. Making sure growers have at least 2 potential outlets for their crops, preferably both a food-grade and feed-grade option, can be a challenge in regions where small grains have been absent from the landscape. Beyond that, feed mills and livestock producers will need to tweak feed formulations that have been comprised exclusively of corn and soy to include small grains. 

The SFL-PFI project is tackling all these issues through collaborations with animal nutritionists, CPG companies, and farmers. Project partner, animal nutritionist Dr. Pete Lammers’ research shows small grains can have a place in the rations of all types of livestock, potentially with additional benefits to gut health. CPG companies’ greenhouse gas reduction commitments provide additional motivation for this work, as they recognize the potential to improve their products’ footprints with small grains as calculated with the Cool Farm Tool. Together these shared opportunities provide an exciting place to improve animal health, farmgate economics, and our collective climate through increasing small grain cultivation.