Listen to episode 2 below, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Amazon Music.
The tallest building in Toledo’s skyline juts out over the back of Kris Swartz’s fields like a lonely and misshapen ear of corn. Despite being so close to a city of more than 250,000 people, his farm sits on some of the most fertile land in the entire state.
Swartz’s fields are still fairly soggy from a rainy spring — wetter than many in recent memory, he says. That means that, even though it’s already mid-May, the soil is still too wet for him to plant his corn.
But while the crops are not yet growing, Swartz’s fields do not lie bare — there are other green shoots growing.
Some farmers might see all those green shoots dotting the field as evidence of a farm suffering from neglect. But not Swartz — he lets nature take the lead. This technique — letting stuff grow on your fields during the winter months — is called cover cropping. Swartz says that the practice helps keep his soil healthy.
The fact that someone like Swartz can farm the way he does shows that it’s time to reconsider how we think about “green” farming. It’s easy to let that signifier generate buzzwords like “organic” and “non-GMO,” but what if “green” was something that couldn’t be confined to a bit of PR-speak on vacuum-sealed packaging? What if “green” conjured up something much more expansive? What if “green” was nothing less than the color of fields, all year long?
To learn more about “green” farming practices across the state, explore the data visuals below.
According to the most recent Census of Agriculture from the USDA, in 2022 nearly 18 million cropland acres in the U.S. were planted with cover crops, a 17% increase since the last census five years prior. However, these acres only account for 4.7% of the nation’s total cropland.
Growing major crops such as wheat, corn, soybeans and cotton, have seen an increase in conservation tillage practices over the past two decades. Corn and soybeans specifically have seen the largest adoption rates by farmers.
Conservation tillage practices are more commonly found on cropland in the Midwest region.
