Produce a farmers guide on cover crops species selection, establishment, and termination

Cover crops are cornerstones of future farming policy and critical components of emerging 'regenerative agriculture' approaches that promise co-delivery of natural capital and human nutrition. While they can deliver multiple agronomic and environmental benefits, from increasing yields by building soil health and resilience to reducing on-farm emissions/inputs and increasing carbon capture and biodiversity, their ability to do so is context-dependant and reliant on selecting species that can perform under conditions specific to the field in which they are sown. Seed selection advice is available through suppliers, but with ~150 commercial mixes marketed in 2020 (Mills et al, 2020), navigating this marketplace is challenging. Appropriate seed selection is also just one of several key factors governing cover crop success, with decisions regarding establishment, management and termination techniques being equally important, especially where barriers to implementation exist (e.g. in organic systems where glyphosate is unavailable for termination, or in northern climates where windows for cover crop growth are typically reduced).

Consequently, despite their inclusion in ELMs/SFIs, and as on-farm options in emerging carbon-trading platforms, farmers are exposed to significant uncertainty/risk when adopting cover crops, with no single source of 'best practice' advice covering seed selection, sowing, agronomy and termination. A poor decision made at any stage in the cover crop production process can result in a failed crop, wasted time, financial loss, and a missed opportunity to leverage a cover crop's full potential. In extreme cases, 'ecosystem disservices' can even result, for example where an ill-chosen cover crop provides a 'green bridge' for pests and diseases of the subsequent cash crop.

Opportunity therefore exists to better support farmers to engage with cover crops and the agronomic, environmental, and socio-economic gains that can flow from them. To realise this opportunity, we propose development of an accessible, independent, farmer-led and scientifically-supported '_Farmer's guide to cover crop selection, establishment, and termination_' to provide confidence to farmers wishing to utilise cover crops, de-risking the decision-making process at all stages, reducing unforeseen costs, and improving the success and uptake of cover crops on-farm. Importantly, this guide will embed external factors that govern successful cover cropping across a range of end-user scenarios (e.g. soil compositions and regional climates), internal drivers that influence how cover crops are designed to best effect (e.g. crop rotation plans and the balance of desired cover crop deliverables), and the tools that can be used to deploy them, including in challenging circumstances.