Where the borders of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois converge above the Mississippi River, Jack and Maria Smith, alongside their sons Nick and Ted, have turned cover crops into the strategic backbone of their diversified farming operation.
Based in eastern Dubuque County, Iowa, the family combines no-till corn and soybeans with a 420-head beef operation. They utilize a spring and fall calving schedule to produce registered seedstock and yearling bulls, while also finishing select calves.
One of the things that makes their farm unique, Nick Smith says, is how completely they’ve integrated cover crops in all aspects of their operation.
“We cover crop every single acre now. We’ve been able to do that for the last five, six, seven years, somewhere in there,” he told Andrew McCrea, during their recent discussion on Farming The Countryside.
Matching Cover Crops To Cattle And Terrain
Because their land is prone to erosion, the Smiths first used cover crops to protect the soil from heavy rains. However, the practice quickly became a “no-brainer” feed source for their beef herd.
On their steepest slopes, the family often uses a two-year rotation centered on covers. They plant a spring cover crop to graze or harvest, then follow it with a diverse “summer cocktail” that is harvested once and grazed in the fall. This rotation prepares the fields for no-till corn the following year.
“With some of our steepest slopes, that’s what we typically do,” Smith says. “On ground that’s not as steep, we grow more continuous corn.”
Most of the family’s cover crop acres are grazed by cattle at some point.
“In the fall, I would say we’re grazing all of them,” Smith says. He notes that distance and accessibility sometimes limit spring grazing. “Probably 50-plus percent of the acres do get grazed in the spring. It just depends on the weather. You can’t really have the cattle out there if it’s wet.”
Custom “Cocktails” For Summer And Fall
Smith chooses different cover crop mixes based on the season and the next crop in the rotation. For summer covers, he prefers diverse blends based on sorghum-sudangrass.
“We love that stuff,” he says. “It’s really hard to screw it up. It’ll grow pretty much anywhere, and it grows quickly. It’s great feed; cows love it.”
He typically adds legumes like clover and buckwheat to those summer mixes. For fall and winter grazing, the farm relies on small grains and brassicas, including triticale, cereal rye, turnips, and oats. These fall covers are usually seeded in August and September.
Smith adjusts his seeding rates based on the upcoming row crop. If a field is headed to soybeans, he seeds cereal rye at a heavier rate.
“Beans like cereal rye,” he said. “If we’ve got a thicker stand out there, that’s not going to bother me.”
If he is planting corn the next year, he uses a lighter rate of cereal rye, especially on fields that won’t be grazed in the spring. The family has also experimented with camelina ahead of corn to add more diversity.
From Planes To Drones — And The Combine
Smith’s father, Jack, began aerial seeding cover crops more than 15 years ago, but the rolling terrain made it difficult to get consistent results.
“In our topography, we haven’t had great success with that,” Smith says. “It’s hard to get good coverage over every acre.”
In recent years, the Smiths have used drones for more precise seeding, especially to drop oats, radishes, or turnips into standing corn to create high-quality fall forage.
“We’ve had years where we’ve had knee-high oats while we’re harvesting corn,” Smith says, though he notes success depends on timely rain.
One of the most significant changes the family made was five years ago when they decided to mount a Gandy air seeder on their combine to plant cereal rye during the corn harvest.
“It’s hydraulically powered and blows the seed so it drops right at or through the header, just before the residue goes through the snapping rolls on the corn head,” Smith says. “As that material goes down through the corn head, it basically covers the seed up and helps trap a little bit more moisture there for it to get going.”
Smith can seed about 15 acres per fill. He dismisses concerns that the practice slows down the harvest.
“Everybody’s excuse is, ‘I don’t want to stop harvest,’” he says. “You can refill in 5 minutes with the right kind of tender. We’re saving a whole other trip, saving a lot of fuel, and we’re getting more growth because it’s done earlier.”
Soil Health And Nitrogen Efficiency
Smith credits no-till and consistent cover cropping with improving his soil function. He has observed faster residue breakdown, more earthworm activity, and higher microbial activity.
“The pace of the increases in organic matter have gone up a lot since we started using the combine, because we’re getting seed in every square foot of every acre, and we’re doing it on a consistent basis,” he reports.
Grazing cover crops has also allowed the family to reduce commercial nitrogen rates over the last six or seven years, even as corn yields have increased.
“From an efficiency standpoint, we’re way more efficient as far as pounds of commercial nitrogen applied per bushel of corn,” Smith says. He attributes this to cattle returning nutrients to the soil via manure, though the exact fertilizer value is hard to quantify.
Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) has played a central role in helping the Smiths refine these systems. Nick says he uses the organization’s website, events, and on-farm trials to guide experimentation with new cover mixes.
Labor And The “Cheat Code” Of Cows
Smith says labor is the biggest barrier for most farmers considering cover crops. However, he argues that seeding during harvest removes that hurdle.
“That’s where the combine’s a no-brainer, because that’s not labor — you’re saving time,” he notes.
He also acknowledges that having cattle makes the financial risk much lower.
“Compared to other farmers, we’ve got a mulligan, if something doesn’t work,” Smith says. “If you’re a cash-grain farmer only and you’re spending money on some cover crops and it doesn’t really work, it’s hard to stomach that cost. For us, if we have something that’s a failure, we can still recover some of that cost — and in a lot of years, way more than recover the cost. The cows are a little bit of a ‘cheat code’ for us in that aspect.”
The Smith Family Farms received the 2025 Regional Environmental Stewardship Award for their efforts in sustainability, which were highlighted during the CattleCon 2026 conference.
Listen to the complete discussion between Nick Smith and Andrew McCrae on Farming The Countryside here.
