RUPERT, Idaho — The primary thing that drives decisions on Luke and Sara Adams’ farm is sugar beets. The couple owns shares in the grower-owned Amalgamated Sugar Co., which allows them to grow a certain number of acres of the tuber crop for processing.

“A lot of our decisions are motivated by sugar beets and sugar beet production,” Luke said.

That led to the couple’s decisions to grow cover crops, first to boost nematode management and later to improve soil health and reap the benefits in the following cash crop.

Luke and Sara first started using cover crops when they returned to the family farm in 2012 after living in Colorado, where he was employed by the U.S. Air Force and she taught school.

They were hoping cover crops would help with pest management in their sugar beets.

“That was kind of the gateway for using cover crops,” Sara said.

The first two years of cover crops were grown in a research project with the University of Idaho. The university researchers were interested in organic matter and helped design the cover crop mixes.

“Based on that success, we started to branch out on our own and do our own mixes,” Luke said.

Luke’s father, Timm, had experimented with oilseed radish in 2010 to control pests in sugar beets.

“He knew it was something important, and we needed to incorporate it,” Luke said.

In addition to the desire to reduce the sugar beet cyst nematode population on the farm, Luke and Sara believed the organic matter produced by cover crops would improve patches of high-calcium, poor soil in their field.

In addition to helping with those issues, cover crops have reduced soil compaction, improved water infiltration and protected the soil against wind erosion.

“Noticeably, in this drought year, it was a snow catch,” Luke said. The cover crops caught and held snow, and as a result the Adamses will go into planting season with more soil moisture.

They plant cover crops after they harvest their grain, malt barley and wheat crops. They graze the cover crops with their neighbors’ sheep and direct seed sugar beets into the stubble in the spring. Direct seeding also reduces erosion.

They plant cover crops on about 500 acres.

“Essentially, we do as much as we possibly can with the water we have,” Luke said.

They’d like to be able to plant cover crops on all of their 2,000 grain acres, but water is a limiting factor. As they get better at choosing drought-tolerant cover crops and experimenting with water needs, those acres will increase, Luke said.

The farm wouldn’t be as successful without cover crops, he said.

The couple’s success with cover crops led them to start another business, AgriTerre Seed, in 2015. That business has grown year after year and now offers a full line of seeds for cover crops, forage crops and corn. They also became a Pioneer dealer in 2019.

“The yield justifies the expense, as well as not using chemicals to handle nematodes,” he said.

Cover crops have “become integrated into our cropping system. It’s really just a matter of which fields and which will wait for next year,” he said. “We target our least productive fields.”

Location: Rupert, Idaho

Co-owners: Timm and Barbara Adams

Acreage: About 5,000, half of it leased

Primary crops: sugar beets, malt barley, potatoes, corn, wheat, alfalfa

Business: AgriTerre Seed

Children: Joey, 8, Adelynn, 6