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| There's a lot more id like to say in this response but im going to hold back. Who determines who is a good farmer or a bad farmer? Later on you say the market but in your initial post it sure seems like you already have a strong opinion about how you feel. Im not going to defend the government payments but I can assure you in this area the guys using cover crops are running profitable operations even without the handouts. Guys who are nearly going broke won't take the chances of adding additional expenses to their constrained cash flow to adopt cover crops. I'm on the county conservation board so I see a lot of the applicants for equip and other programs on cover crops. What I can tell you is a lot of those operations have increased their land base over the last 10 years significantly. The funding rate on those applications are fairly low, but the producers applying are typically strong operations. On the other hand if the applicants for structures or other non-cover crop assistance have a wide range of different applicants but most are people who refuse to improve their farm without government assistance. It just so happens those same people haven't expanded their operation in 30 years.
I want to be clear, im not judging anyone or their operation. If someone chooses not to expand doesn't mean they are not a strong operation or not turning a profit it's just their choice. The point im trying to make is if we are determining if a farm operation is good or bad based on "the market" weeding them out then I would say there is 0 correlation to cover crops and bad farmers here.
Edited by ks_cover_crop 12/12/2025 13:39
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Why do we want to help bad farmers?
