Agriculture and Environment: Corn (Maize)

Better Management Practices: Use Crop Rotation

The same crop cannot be grown continuously on the same piece of land year after year without causing serious damage and serious problems.

Rotations are normally 3-4 years, but in some cases with organic producers, corn rotations can be 5-6 years and involve corn, soybeans, oats, hay, and fallow. In these systems corn is produced only every 5 years. The overall profitability of such operations depends not only on the value of all different crops, averaged over the rotation, but also on the reduced input costs associated with continual monocropping of the same crop.

Crop rotations can be shortened if clover or other legume cover crops are sown when oats or wheat are planted and then allowed to grow for the remainder of that crop year, effectively getting 2 crops in one year. In the tropics, 2-3 sequential crops (e.g., those grown in the same year) are normally part of multiyear rotations.

Such rotations are not only undertaken by organic producers. In Brazil corn producers regularly have corn-soybean-cotton rotations. Within any given year, grass or other off-season crops are planted to increase the biomass. These crops are sprayed with weed killer, but the total amount of pesticides and fungicides used on such crops is half that of traditional producers in the area.

In addition, these production systems are allowing smart, forward-looking producers to buy up degraded pasture land and rehabilitate it within 4-5 years. In effect, they are making as much money rehabilitating land as they do from growing marketable products.