Can this trick double the size of broccoli and other produce? It’s popular in Pierce County

Burr Mosby of Mosby Brothers Farms in the Auburn area grew 34,000 pounds of various types of peas, wheat, and other crops on a single acre of his land last year.

He and his crew harvested 8 pounds of product per square foot. Mosby didn’t sell any of it.

Instead, after harvesting and weighing, Mosby took the 34,000 pounds back to the field and left it to decompose. It broke down back into the soil.

Mosby is part of a growing number of farmers in Pierce County using a farming practice known as cover cropping to enhance the health of his soil.

He’s part of a Pierce Conservation District cover crop loan program that launched in 2020. Participation has nearly doubled since it started.

“In 2020, we supported 40 acres for seven farmers for a total of $5,800; in 2023, we supported 303 acres for 19 farmers for a total of $37,000,” Allison Nichols, the crop farm manager at the PCD, wrote in an email to The News Tribune.

The young program encourages local farmers to experiment with cover crops by paying for the first three years’ worth of seeds. Once those three years are up, farmers are able to reapply for the loan for different parts of their property.

By then, according to Nichols, most farmers have figured out if cover crops will work for them and tend to continue the practice on their own dime.

The crops that Mosby harvested weren’t his traditional crops like cucumber or pumpkin. Instead, it was a combination of triticale (a wheat and rye hybrid), Austrian pea and vetch (which are both in the legume family).

Cover crops are a wide range of plants that can help ward off weeds, prevent soil erosion, and reintroduce nutrients back into farmland that has been subjected to heavy years of farming.

They aren’t a new farming tool. Mosby said the practice has been around since the Dust Bowl in 1930. However, farmers across the United States have seen more funding programs in recent years like the one in Pierce County to help support it.

The funding for the cover crop loan program comes from several different sources. Some of these sources include the Pierce County Agriculture Program , a state program called Sustainable Farms and Fields , and funding from the PCD’s budget (about $10 of the average Pierce County homeowner’s property tax bill goes to the PCD, the agency told The News Tribune last year).

How long is the program expected to last? According to Nichols, the PCD plans to run the program as long as there’s enough funding.

“We don’t anticipate that we will discontinue; it’s more a matter of how much we are able to do based on the funding we can access,” Nichols said.

The economic impacts aren’t clear

What does all this mean for Pierce County grocery shoppers? Will shoppers see lower prices on produce, or will prices continue to grow?

It’s easy to think that a practice like cover cropping, which is being promoted and paid for because of its positive effect on the soil, would lower the cost of produce for consumers because of the hypothetical bigger yields of produce being harvested. Healthier soil means bigger harvests.

However, Professor Michael Brady at Washington State University said widespread use of cover cropping is still new, and that it’s too early to tell what the economic impact on consumers and farmers will be.

“The jury is still out because there’s a lot of research, working around cover crops in Washington right now, and so there’s a big effort to really try to figure out what the benefits may be and best practices are,” Brady said.

That doesn’t mean consumers won’t see positives at some point.

“In the long run, the thought is that it would benefit. Producers wouldn’t do it unless it did have a benefit. It just happens indirectly; it improves their growing potential, either reduces their cost or increases their yields with their main cash crop over the long run,” Brady said.

Brian Mesa, owner and operator of De La Mesa Farms in unincorporated Pierce County east of Parkland, said the produce prices consumers are seeing don’t reflect what it costs farmers to grow that food.

“To be completely honest, the price of produce is too low. What we’re buying produce for doesn’t really match the amount of work we have to put in to produce this high-quality food,” Mesa said.

If shoppers want produce that has been grown in a healthy way, he said, they should be prepared for higher prices. Otherwise, he argues cheap produce shoppers do find can promote poor practices, such as the overuse of pesticides and low wages for farm laborers.

Good for soil, good for water quality

Despite uncertainty about the economic role that cover crops play in all of that, the Pierce Conservation District and other local and national organizations, such as the United States Department of Agriculture, encourage farmers to adopt cover crops to benefit the soil and to improve water quality.

According to the USDA , the plant coverage that comes with growing cover crops benefits the soil and the local water quality by preventing soil erosion and nutrient runoff after heavy and consistent rain. Pierce County farmers who incorporate cover crops into their rotation prevent pesticides, nutrients, and other things living in their top soil from washing into waterways that eventually lead to Puget Sound.

However, these benefits won’t be seen overnight. As Mosby notes: “It takes years to build up organic matter.”

That doesn’t mean farmers haven’t started to see changes or benefits to their land or to their money-making crops.

For farmers like Mesa, who’s incorporated cover crops into his farming practice for nearly ten years, the benefits aren’t only in his farm’s soil health; they’re also in the size of his crop.

This year, Mesa and the rest of the De La Mesa crew were harvesting about 2-pound heads of broccoli and 2-pound heads of cauliflower. After they grow a new round of their cover crop mix, which includes oats and various types of peas, among other things, Mesa reckons that the size of the broccoli and cauliflower will double.

“We’re looking for 3- and 4-pound heads of cauliflower and broccoli. And after we plant this cover crop, I mean, that vision is going to be no problem,” Mesa said.

Additionally, farmers who incorporate cover crops see an increase in bugs and worms that help soil health. Research from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service notes that earthworms play a key role in consistently changing the structure of the soil, “which improves soil tilth, aeration, infiltration, and drainage.”

Mosby and his crew see the reward of their 15-year dedicated use of cover crops whenever they weed their organic leeks.

“In one of our organic fields of leeks, we are out there hand weeding, and one time our crew member goes: ‘God, what’s with all these worms out here?’ And I go: ‘That just tells us we’re doing the right thing.’”

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