Cover crops! They rule!

Hope, in a warming world, is hard work! It’s easy to just have doom feelings, right? We get it. But you know what brings us hope? PLANTS! And FARMERS! Specifically, farmers using COVER CROPS! Let’s explain:

Things that burn fuel (cars… power plants… etc.) put carbon in the air. That carbon warms our planet (that’s climate change). 

Cover crops are plants that smart farmers grow to cover the soil when their main crop is in the off season.

When cover crops eat the carbon out of the air (where it’s doing harm), they make new roots. Those roots literally put the carbon underground - where it can’t hurt us anymore.

And while the roots are down there, they protect the soil from wind and water, so the carbon in the soil doesn't blow or wash away. (When soil erodes like that, the carbon goes right back into the air.)

When the cover crops die and those roots decay, they turn into nutrients in the soil. Healthy, organic, living soil. The circle of life! This is the kind of soil you don’t need to put fertilizer in to make food come out of it.

Smart, right? Why doesn’t everyone do this?! GREAT QUESTION!

They should, full stop. But farming is *really* hard. It’s a lot to manage, just to plant in spring, fertilize in summer, harvest in fall, and plan for the next spring in winter. Conventional farming slowly saps the health of the soil, making each year harder than the next, demanding more fertilizer each year. While cover cropping helps with that, adding whole other crop rotations and cover crops is a LOT of work. Plus, many farmers depend on government subsidies to make their farming operations financially viable — and those subsidies do not cover cover crops.

Let’s connect the dots here. We only work with farmers that utilize systems like cover cropping. So, when you pay a little more for your pancakes at Long Table, you’re paying farmers to do the work we, as a people, need to do to hand a livable world down the table to the next generations.

Now eat a good breakfast, and do good work!