Chehalis Basin Board approves funding for fledgling cover crop program
The Chehalis Basin Board voted earlier this month to approve a funding request to purchase equipment intended to help basin farmers plant cover crops in soil that has been ravaged by flooding.
Southwest Washington Growers Cooperative Executive Director Jake Fay appeared in front of the Chehalis Basin Board during its monthly meeting on Thursday, April 2, to request approximately $370,000 in Office of Chehalis Basin funding to support a new cover crop program.
The board approved the funding request, which will allow the growers co-op to purchase two no-till drills for planting as well as an air screen to clean the harvested seed and an initial purchase of cover crop seeds.
According to Fay's presentation, the no-till drills make up the bulk of the expense at just under $125,000 per drill and nearly $250,000 in total. The two 15-foot-wide no-till drills are used to plant seeds in soil without plowing. Fay and the growers co-op hope the new equipment will make it more affordable for farmers in the basin to plant cover crops in their field at times when it is too risky to plow the soil, like after extreme floods.
"We've talked about some cover cropping," Fay said. "It's not a real widely used practice in the basin. Maybe half of the producers do it, and there's lots of reasons that we don't."
Fay said the cost is the biggest reason why locals don't plant cover crops that could help soil health and prevent erosion. The equipment currently available to farmers for purchase or day leases is often too expensive to justify, too small to be effective or a mix of both.
In response to questions from the board members, Fay clarified the two tractor implements would be owned by the Southwest Washington Growers Co-op and rented out to local farmers for use. The co-op would store one of the two implements in the Centralia and Chehalis area and another in the lower part of the basin between Oakville and Montaseno.
The funding request also includes money for a grain cleaner and an initial purchase of cover crops for the area. Roughly $50,000 will go toward purchasing seed either for high demand crops or for crops that would restore nitrogen levels and improve soil health. A total of $67,000 will pay for an air screen grain cleaner that would allow farmers to clean the seed gathered from harvested cover crops before sale or for planting in another season.
Fay said there is currently demand for cover crops such as peas, cereal rye and wheat that could even grow in the coming years. The co-op is currently planting 1,100 acres of wheat on contract with demand for as many as 2,800 acres of the crop.
"These opportunities are growing because now we have a place to aggregate, store, load rail cars," Fay said. "So I see easily within the next couple of years, under these types of contracts, we could be four or 5000 acres."
Fay added that the demand for the crops grown in part because of the Southwest Washington Grain Project that gives local farmers a place to store and ship out local grain.
Concerning the timeline for the implementation of the co-op's cover crop plans, Fay said the timing of the funding request is good, expecting that the co-op could receive the ordered equipment and the seed necessary by planting time in the late summer or early fall.
According to Fay, the equipment, if ordered immediately, could arrive as soon as July, and the grain cleaning mechanism could ship within a week of being ordered. Acquiring the grain would be the wildcard for the co-op as it depends on what seeds farmers choose to purchase and likely what contracts are available for the season.
"So timing is good. These fall planted cover crops that we would be looking to use the no tills to plant could happen anywhere from, you know, the end of August into the first week of October," Fay said.
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