Jason Mauck, Gaston, is 35 years old. He's excited about a cropping system that he sees great potential for. It is relay intercropping. Basically, the idea is to have more than one crop growing at least part of the time so that you squeeze three cash crops into two seasons.

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"It really increases the potential for more gross revenue and profit," he says. Jason's grandfather, Louie Heaton, was also an innovator, trying various cropping systems long before almost anyone else looked at them.

Three crops in two years: Jason Mauck lives where that's not usually possible, but he's using relay intercropping to make it happen.

The only thing about relay intercropping is that it's not really new. The idea has been tried for likely as long as Mauck has been alive. Other editors, and even myself, have done stories about farmers figuring out how to seed soybeans into standing wheat as far back as at least three decades. Some made their own equipment to do it. Others adapted narrow row tires on small tractors to drill soybeans into standing wheat. Typically, wheat in this system is on 15 inch rows, or wider.

Some of the people interviewed in the past made it work. Why didn't it catch on across more acres? You could speculate that certain types of equipment, wheat and soybean varieties and herbicides available now weren't available then.

If you're in the southern half of the state, you may be content with double-cropping soybeans after wheat harvest in mid-to-late June. However, one of the early innovators trying this practice farmed in Sullivan County, and it was the mid-1980s. I personally saw soybeans growing under his wheat canopy before wheat harvest.

Mauck farms in east-central Indiana, well north of the area where double-cropping generally fits. He's on 20-inch rows, and he's excited that he can make this system work today. And he's not alone. Other farmers from Michigan to even Wisconsin are also trying to make it work. Each one goes about it in their own way.

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One issue yet to be determined is whether or not a cover crop, which isn't a direct cash crop, can fit into the system, Mauck observes. Relay intercropping is a work in progress for him, but he's committed to making it work.