Massachusetts - State helicopters will drop cover crop seeds

A helicopter will start making flights across the state this month, hovering over farms to drop seed in the hopes of producing a "cover crop" to protect soil through winter.  The chopper is from the state Department of Agriculture and is depositing the winter ryegrass seed onto cornfields so that when the main crop is harvested, the cover crop will already be established in the dirt. "It gives the seed a start that it wouldn't probably have," said Jim Lattanzi, owner of Hollis Hill farm in Fitchburg. "By cover cropping now, in August, the seed gets started, we go in and chop corn, but the grass is already started."