Economic Feasibility of Grazing Summer Cover Crops and Intercropping in No-till Winter Wheat Production in the Texas Rolling Plains.

Soil conservation practices, including no-till and cover crops, provide considerable agronomic and soil benefits. Adoption of no-till and cover crops has been promoted in multiple cropping systems across U.S. Production cost increase has been considered a major barrier for adopters. Grazing cover crops could encourage the adoption if returns offset establishment costs without reducing cash crop yields. To investigate the agronomic and economic benefits, we initiated the cover crop studies on dryland wheat production in the Texas Rolling Plains. The experiment was conducted from 2013 to 2015, and treatments included 1) conventional tillage (CT), 2) no-till (NT), 3) NT with summer mixed species cover crops (CC), 4) NT-CC with cattle flash grazing (GR), 5) NT with intercropping (IC) in winter wheat, 6) NT-CC-IC, and 7) NT-CC-GR-IC. The economic results showed that compared to conventional tillage, no-till saved $11/ac due to reduced tillage operation, while adding cover crops to no-till increased the production costs by $47/ac (relative to CT). The estimated production costs for cover crops were $58/ac greater than that without cover crops, and that intercropping increased the total cost by $6/ac compared to no intercropping. Regarding the benefits, grazing cover crops increased total revenue by $46/ac on average, compared to non-grazing. Compared to the conventional tillage ($-26/ac), no-till without cover crops had the greatest net return, $-17/ac, followed by intercropping within no-till systems without cover crops, $-25/ac. Among all the cover crops treatments, grazing increased the net return, including $-44/ac and $-50/ac for NT-CC-GR and NT-CC-GR-IC, respectively. However, the net returns for non-grazing were significantly lower, i.e., $-82/ac for NT-CC without grazing, and $-94/ac for NT-CC-IC without grazing. Therefore, the short-term economic analysis indicated that incorporation of grazing on summer cover crops should be considered for encouraging cover crop adoption, while intercropping does not show any economic advantage.