What began as an on-farm experiment outside Bladen, Nebraska, has grown into a business serving farmers across the country.
Keith Berns, co-founder of Green Cover, joined the Building Nebraska podcast to share how curiosity led to the creation of one of the nation’s leading cover crop companies.
After returning to the family farm in 1998, Berns and his brother were introduced to the idea of diverse cover crop blends through a presentation by Brazilian agronomist Ademir Calegari. Skeptical but intrigued, the brothers launched their own field trial to answer a question many producers were asking at the time: Would cover crops use too much soil moisture?
The results surprised them.
“We thought that the sensors were broken because they showed about the same amount of moisture in the soil as what the bare wheat stubble did. It’s like, ‘How can that be?’ Because we grew all this biomass.”
The trial revealed that diverse cover crop mixes retained moisture far better than they expected while also improving cattle performance. That combination convinced the brothers they had discovered something worth sharing.
Green Cover officially launched in 2009.
The goal, Berns said, wasn’t to build a large company.
“Our goal was never to get huge. Our goal was to help people.”
What began by selling enough seed for roughly 1,000 acres has grown into a company that now employs around 60 people, moves approximately 30 million pounds of seed annually and ships customized cover crop blends for more than one million acres.
Unlike many growing businesses, Green Cover invested heavily in education instead of traditional advertising. Berns, a former agriculture teacher, said helping producers understand how healthy soil functions naturally leads them toward better management decisions.
The company publishes a free annual soil health guide, produces educational videos and podcasts, and hosts webinars and field days across the country.
“If people understand how the soil functions and how God created the plants and the biology to work together to build soil,” Berns said, “then the only logical conclusion that they can come to is that at some point in their cropping rotation, they need a cover crop.”
As the company expanded, Berns said one lesson became increasingly important: defining the organization’s culture before rapid growth makes it difficult.
While Green Cover’s values existed from the beginning, they weren’t clearly communicated until several years into the business. Today, the company hires, evaluates and leads employees around four core values: treat people right, family matters, teamwork and always growing.
“Know who you are from the very beginning. You have to know what problem exists out in the marketplace that you can help somebody solve, because that’s why people are going to buy something.”
For aspiring entrepreneurs, Berns encouraged building relationships long before they’re needed and focusing on solving meaningful problems rather than simply creating a product.
The full conversation with Keith Berns is available on the Building Nebraska podcast, powered by the Engler Agribusiness Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
