French Innovation Meets Alberta Fields: A Conversation on Cover Crops

When Frédéric Thomas from BASE France visited Daryl Chubb’s farm this August, he brought with him decades of experience in conservation agriculture and cover cropping. But the visit was never intended as a one-way flow of expertise. The goal was to create space for Alberta producers to share their experiences and compare approaches with Frédéric’s own. What emerged was a grounded and productive exchange—linking two farming cultures, both rooted in regenerative principles but shaped by very different climates and histories.

About BASE and Frédéric Thomas

Frédéric is a founder of BASE (Biodiversité, Agriculture, Sol et Environnement), a French farmer-led organization started in Brittany. Since 2000, BASE has become an influential network promoting soil health, biodiversity, and conservation agriculture in Europe. The group supports innovation by connecting producers, researchers, and advisors interested in systems thinking, reduced tillage, and cover cropping.

Frédéric himself is a no-till pioneer, editor of TCS (Techniques Culturales Simplifiées), and a well-known speaker at regenerative events such as Groundswell in the UK. His work emphasizes practical, producer-tested approaches that aim to build resilient soils and diversify income streams.

Learning Across Landscapes

As often happens when producers from different parts of the world meet, the conversation quickly turned to local challenges—and how each landscape shapes decisions on the ground.

For Frédéric, one of the biggest challenges on his farm in central France has been managing sandy soils overlying a clay base, a combination that can be difficult in both wet and dry conditions. But over the past 20 years, through a mix of continuous cover cropping and strategic sheep grazing, he’s been able to steadily build organic matter and improve soil aggregation. These improvements have made it easier to manage water, both in terms of retention and infiltration.

In Alberta, many producers start with higher baseline levels of soil organic matter, particularly in areas that haven’t been intensively cultivated. But water is a different story—rainfall is often limited and inconsistent. For that reason, cover crops are increasingly seen as a useful tool here too—not only for building organic matter and aggregation over time, but also for helping to make the most of the moisture that does fall.

Adaptation Tip: Producers in low-precipitation zones might consider drought-tolerant species like hairy vetch, cereal rye, and daikon radish. These cover crops have shown promise in improving soil structure and moisture retention, even under dry conditions.

The discussion offered a helpful reminder: while growing conditions may differ, the principles of regenerative agriculture—soil structure, biodiversity, and water efficiency—apply across contexts. It’s just a matter of adapting them to local realities.

MERCI: A Decision Tool for Estimating Nutrient Contributions

A focal point of the day was Frédéric’s introduction to MERCI (Méthode d’Estimation du Retour de Couvert Interculture), a French tool developed to estimate how much nitrogen cover crops contribute to the next crop. Created by researchers using a database of 25,000 measurements across 74 cover crop species and simulations using the STICS soil-crop model, MERCI is a robust and practical decision-support tool.

It allows producers to estimate nitrogen availability from cover crop residues using just one easy field measurement: fresh shoot biomass at termination. MERCI then uses species-specific models to predict dry biomass, carbon-to-nitrogen (C:N) ratio, and potential nitrogen release over time, depending on termination timing and local soil-climate conditions.

You can read the full study here: MERCI: a simple method and decision-support tool to estimate availability of nitrogen from a wide range of cover crops to the next cash crop (Plant and Soil, 2024)​.

Figure Highlight: How MERCI Works

Figure 1 from the MERCI paper illustrates the tool’s structure. It starts with a simple measurement of fresh biomass in the field, which feeds into a chain of estimations: converting to dry biomass, calculating N content, simulating decomposition and nitrogen mineralization using the STICS model, and finally estimating nitrogen available to the next crop.

This method reduces the barrier to on-farm nutrient budgeting, especially where lab testing or detailed modeling isn’t feasible.

Soil Health Monitoring in Alberta

Frédéric expressed particular interest in the Regenerative Alberta Living Lab (RA-LL) and its approach to tracking soil health. Over the course of this five-year initiative, RA-LL is conducting three rounds of soil sampling across 1,500 points in Alberta. These samples will help producers and researchers alike understand how regenerative practices—such as cover cropping, reduced tillage, and livestock integration—are influencing key soil health indicators like carbon sequestration, bulk density, and water infiltration.

Livestock Integration: Shared Curiosity

The conversation also touched on integrating sheep into cover crop systems—something Frédéric has explored extensively. Local producers compared notes on rotational grazing, fencing logistics, and the added benefit of animals helping to manage biomass post-harvest. It was clear that interest in mixed systems is growing, particularly as input costs rise and producers look for ways to build more circular farm economies.

Ideas to Consider

Throughout the day, a number of themes emerged—ideas that might resonate with others exploring regenerative strategies:

• Adapting cover crop strategies to Alberta’s shorter seasons and variable rainfall can help improve consistency and resilience.

• Livestock integration—where feasible—may offer both soil and financial benefits.

• Monitoring soil health over time, whether formally through tools like MERCI or informally through observation, helps track impact.

• International knowledge exchange can challenge assumptions and spark new thinking, especially when grounded in shared on-farm experiences.

Interested in Calibrating MERCI for Alberta?

If you're interested in helping adapt and calibrate the MERCI model for Alberta’s soils and growing conditions, please reach out to the Regenerative Alberta Living Lab. Local validation would help make tools like MERCI more relevant and useful to producers here—and create new opportunities for collaborative innovation.