Scott Gillespie, a regenerative agriculture consultant and host of the Plants Dig Soil podcast, joins Dan to bring a realistic, economics first lens to cover cropping in Western Canada's short season, semi-arid growing conditions. He walks through his FIRST framework for deciding whether a cover crop belongs on a given field, and why species selection, the part most producers start with, should actually come last. The tension is that most cover crop advice comes from regions with far more moisture and a much longer growing window, advice that can cost a Prairie producer their next cash crop if followed without adjustment. Producers walk away with a clear-eyed way to evaluate cover cropping on its actual return, not on the hype around it.
A cover crop that pays in Ontario or North Dakota can cost you the moisture you need on the dry southern Prairies. Scott Gillespie, a regenerative agriculture consultant in southern Alberta and host of the Plants Dig Soil podcast, makes the case for treating a cover crop like any other input: it has to solve a real problem and earn its money back.
Scott grew up on a corn and soybean farm in Ontario and now works in Alberta's dryland and irrigated country. In this conversation with Dan Aberhart he describes what he says producers actually see in a short, semi-arid season, and where the hype runs ahead of the evidence.
What's Inside
• His FIRST framework: Fit, Implementation, Return on investment, Species and Termination, for deciding whether a cover crop belongs on a field at all
• Why holding soil in place in a windstorm may be the fastest, clearest return on dry land
• Why species comes last, and why a fancy mix is rarely the place to start
• How to weigh the cost of seed and seeding against what comes back in the next crop
• Why you need more than one plan to terminate a cover crop, and what a dry year can do to your moisture
• What relay interseeding into a standing crop could unlock that post-harvest seeding cannot
• Why he says the barriers are mindset, a system that still works, and the absence of incentives
• Why "regenerative" has no agreed definition, and how he uses it
Take the Cover Crop Course here: https://plantsdigsoil.thinkific.com/courses/cover-crops-prairies?coupon=future
Plants Dig Soil podcast: https://www.plantsdigsoil.com/podcast
Connect with Scott:
Website: plantsdigsoil.com
Twitter: scottgillespie
Linkedin: scottgillespie
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