Research? Just never stop learning.

“Withut deviation progress is not possible.” This is probably the first time a USDA-NIFA report has inspiration in a quote attributed to Frank Zappa!

The quote is interesting, but we don’t totally agree with it in the context of our latest quarterly report (May 1 – July 31, 2024). We have never stopped learning about perennial groundcover since we started this project in 2021. Each research result teaches us something new, and we reassess what we previously believed in light of new information. At the same time, we never deviate from our goal of developing and increasing the reliability of perennial ground cover systems.

We measure our progress on our ability to make continuous course corrections. With that mindset, we think we are well on our way to demonstrating that perennial groundcover can be a useful approach to providing a range of farm operations with cover crops that require low labor inputs, provide significant ecosystem benefits, increase row crop resiliency, and have similar economic profiles as conventional row crop practices.