Use of cover crops is more common in the southern and eastern United States

Farmers and ranchers use a number of practices to build or restore soil health. One such practice is cover cropping. Farmers plant cover crops or cover crop mixes between plantings of commodity crops (usually in the winter). Reasons for planting cover crops include reducing erosion, preserving soil moisture, and increasing organic matter. Common cover crops include clover, field peas, and annual ryegrass. Cover crops are not harvested and so do not provide revenue for a farmer, although sometimes farms get direct value out of a cover crop through grazing their livestock on the crop. The use of cover cropping is concentrated in the southern and eastern United States. Regional differences in the adoption of cover cropping may be related to differences in climate, regional agricultural markets, and State incentive programs. For example, Maryland has relatively high rates of adoption because of a program that pays farmers to grow cover crops in order to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. This chart appears in the September 2016 Amber Waves feature, “An Economic Perspective on Soil Health.”