Soil Health in Sugar Beet Rotations with Mike Van Eps

Mike Van Eps of Centrol Ag Consulting has been a crop consultant for over 20 years in the Southern Red River Valley. He’s in the heart of sugar beet country but also scouts a lot of acres of corn, soybeans, and wheat. He joins us to discuss the soil health building practices he implements with his growers including things like rye strips, spring barley, and increasing strip tillage. We also talk more generally about some of the barriers to adoption of some of these practices, approaches that are successful and some that aren’t in his area, and a little bit on his experiences with the trusted advisor partnership.  

“We're able to maybe push the limits, but tradition and people are set in their ways. It's difficult to change those habits, but we are. We're starting to see changes to where we can begin to do some more less tillage, more conservation type planting, cover crops, integrating into our rotation in front of sugar beets.” - Mike Van Eps

Changes in technology have allowed for expansion of sugar beet soil health practices. Producers have access to GMO crops, availability of different herbicides and because of that use of cover crops. “There weren’t a lot of options” to battle wind erosion with cover crops prior to these advances. 

“I have yet to have a field of rye blow. Last spring was a disaster for wind erosion for us. We replanted 20% of our sugar beet acres from wind sand blasting. It was just an awful spring including where we had spring barley cover crops. They blew out as well. But the rye, it's big enough and aggressive enough where it doesn't move…it’s a little early in this season to tell yet but I have complete confidence that we’re going to weather anything that mother nature can throw at these sugar beets right now where the rye is.” - Mike Van Eps

This Week on Soil Sense:

• Meet Mike Van Eps of Centrol Ag Consulting

• Discover soil health building practices for the sugar beet producer