Cover crops, with their ability to reduce erosion and promote soil health, are being planted across more Midwestern land than ever. That’s according to new University of Illinois research showing cover crop adoption reached 7.2 percent in 2021, which is an increase from just 1.8 percent a decade prior. The finding is the result of sophisticated satellite-based remote sensing efforts that accurately detected cover crops across 140 million acres of cropland and tracked their expansion over 20 years.
Cover cropping increased, boosted by government programs
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Fall cover crops emerge in a corn field that's been harvested.
Figure 1 shows cover crops as a share of cropland acres from 2012 to 2017.
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