Cover Cropping Project

The Northern Watersheds Cover Crop Project is a focused multi-farm effort to increase farm resiliency to climate change through the combined use of proven agronomic farm Best Management Practices (BMPs) which will allow farms to store upland stormwater, increase topsoil organic matter, and reduce the effects of erosion from extreme rainfall events. This project funded 200 acres in the Ontario County Northern Watersheds AEM planning unit and is the kind of holistic effort needed to bring noticeable positive impacts to the focus watershed area. The 200 acres of cover crops planted helped three farms store and infiltrate more water in the topsoil to reduce runoff in the watershed all while holding soil in place during extreme rain events. Cover crops are agronomic BMPs that Ontario County SWCD routinely installs and the constant demand from our farmers for more agronomic erosion control BMPs speaks volumes on the benefits that farms see from these systems both on their own land as well as on neighboring farmland. Farms in this project included both livestock and cash crop producers.