Crop rotation

So now you see rice prices come back down, but because they were growing rice and now cotton, not cotton, cotton shot up 20% plus this year, well actually close to 30% this year.

And so now you see a lot of farmers as they plan out to 27, they can look at the cotton futures and plan So that's the crop rotation and diversification.

Soybeans require the fewest inputs.

But you can't naturally, if you're a soybean farmer and only a soybean farmer, you can't naturally look and switch to cotton.

Last year, this soybean field had corn in it, and the corn field had soybeans.

Crop Crew, do you know what it's called when farmers plant different crops in different fields each year? A, musical chairs, B, crop rotation, or C, field flipping? Did you say B? That's right.

Farmers rotate their crops between their fields.

But my good friends Rowan and Ethan want to know why fields grow different crops each year.

Maybe farmers just forget which crop was planted in each field? I don't think that's the reason.

Farmers put a lot of work into their planting decisions, so there must be a good reason for crop rotation.

Oh, oh look! Look! Sawyer the soil scientist is coming down the lane now.

I've asked him to come out to the farm to take some soil samples, but I bet he can tell us all about crop rotation.

But yeah, it's just, it comes back to dollars and cents and corn and soybeans have paid the bills.

So talking about diversification and crop rotation, what if you're getting really good deals on one thing? Let's say this dairy close by wants to buy all of our acres of silage.

What about rotation?

Yeah.

Many have been continuous corn.

You can do it.

Now, crop rotation is nice for many reasons.

Insects, diseases.

And speaking of work for me, we have a question here for Lynn.

She grew up in a farm community millions of years ago and was taught crop rotation was important, but she's hearing is not as important now.

So she wants to know about crop rotation.

What are the facts on crop rotation? All right.

So, um, Crop rotation.

All right.

So it's interesting.

George Washington Carver said that, you know, a lot of times in the South, a lot of the crops that they were having, they were bleeding all of the nutrients out of the soil because they weren't rotating crops great.