Cover crops and double cropping reach 32 percent of US cotton acres, USDA says

American growers of corn, soybeans and cotton have sharply expanded their use of double cropping and cover cropping over the past two decades, and the change has been largest in cotton. The finding comes from a Chart of Note published on 16 April 2026 by the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and prepared by ERS economist Andrew B. Rosenberg.

ERS defines double cropping as planting a crop in the fall between summer crops to raise the productive value of a single field, for example sowing winter wheat after corn has been harvested, or planting soybeans after a winter wheat harvest.

Cover crops are unharvested winter crops grown primarily for their soil health and environmental benefits. Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), a USDA-funded programme, says cover crops slow erosion, improve soil health, enhance water availability, smother weeds, help control pests and diseases and add organic matter to the soil. Legume cover crops can also fix nitrogen from the air; rye, oats, clovers, vetch and radish are common choices.

Cover cropping can be fitted into either of two systems: a summer rotation, in which the summer crop in a field alternates across years, as in a corn-soybean rotation, or continuous cropping, in which the main warm-season crop stays the same for a period of years.

Cotton fields have seen the largest increase in these practices, ERS reports. The area under either double cropping or cover cropping grew from 15 percent of cotton acres in 2003 to 32 percent in 2019. The chart breaks planted corn, soybean and cotton acres down by rotation type.

According to ERS, the data suggest that the decline in single cropping, where a field carries one crop and then sits bare for the rest of the year, is largely driven by the expanded use of cover crops rather than by double cropping. In practice, more fields that once grew one cash crop and then lay bare are now kept covered through the winter for the sake of the soil.

The cotton figures fit a broader pattern. An ERS report published in February 2021, "Cover Crop Trends, Programs, and Practices in the United States", found that the use of cover crops on U.S. cropland increased by 50 percent between 2012 and 2017. SARE puts the area planted to cover crops in 2017 at 15.4 million acres and says the number of farms planting them rose 15.2 percent from 2012 to 2017.

The ERS report notes that federal and state conservation programmes have stepped up financial and technical assistance to promote cover crops. The ERS topic page on soil tillage and crop rotation, updated on 17 December 2025, says cover crops have become a major focus of conservation spending in recent years, and that the shares of wheat, corn, soybean and cotton acres under some form of conservation tillage have also increased.

Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Sources: USDA Economic Research Service (Chart of Note, 16 April 2026; Soil Tillage and Crop Rotation, 2025; Cover Crop Trends, Programs, and Practices in the United States, 2021), Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), Wikipedia