A couple of rural Chapin farmers are doing their part to reduce nutrient loss from their fields and help the environment.

 

John Werries and his son, Dean, started planting cover crops in the fall of 2012 as a way to stop soil erosion.

 

“The more we learned about it, the more benefits we realized,” John Werries said.

 

Cover crops’ benefits include sequestering nutrients, helping break up soil compaction and adding organic matter to the soil.

 

“We were urged to start experimenting on a small scale for several years before adopting it on a large scale,” John Werries said. “However, when we started, I was 65 years old and may not have had 10 years to experiment, so we started sowing cover crops on 100 percent of our acres the first year. And the first year was very successful.”

 

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