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From 9.16.2021 Farm News - Thaddeus
My first memory of cover crops goes back to my childhood. My parents were passionate about cover cropping and the magic of how it builds the soil. The deep green leaves of fava beans interspersed with tiny bright purple flowers of vetch were what I remembered of those crops. It would be a decade later that I understood the true value of this practice.
The legume family of vegetables has amazing superpowers. In general, the limiting factor to organic yields is the amount of nitrogen available to a plant. While 78% of the atmosphere is nitrogen gas, it is not in a form that plants can access. The type of nitrogen most used by plants for growth and development is nitrate. One of the superpowers of legumes is that they have nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live in their root nodules! These bacteria fix nitrogen gas from the atmosphere into a form of nitrogen that will ultimately be used by plants.
This is one of the many reasons why over 40 years of Capay Organic feeding the ground that feeds you is so good for the environment. In addition to reducing the need for importing organic fertilizer, cover crops sequester a lot of carbon: about 3 metric tons of CO2 per acre, according to the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program (SARE.org). At our farm, we already grow enough cover crops to offset the growing of our vegetables. I like to think of it as the estimated 10% of greenhouse gases caused by agriculture, according to the EPA, are not coming from our farming operations.
That said, we would love to grow more cover crops with your help. We have the ground, the seeds and the sun, but it doesn’t pencil out for us to plant more than we already do. It is for this reason we are opening up the opportunity for you to contribute to growing more acres of cover crop. Thank you for considering cover crop sponsorship.
About the producer
Growing organically since 1976, our farm, Capay Organic, started with 20 acres of star thistle and a dream. Inspired by the idea of farming sustainably, our parents, Kathy Barsotti and Martin Barnes, started the farming traditions that we, their sons, carry on with our families today. Capay Organic practices healthy crop rotation, encouraging a diverse ecosystem around the fields, efficiently using local water sources and carefully selecting produce varieties that grow well and taste great. With nearly 40 types of fruits and vegetables and over 60 varieties, our diverse crop list allows us to provide organic produce and jobs year-round to our family of customers and employees.
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