Cover-Crop Acres Up in Texas, Stagnant Across Rest of the South

May 17, 2024

By Alejandro Plastina & Wendiam Sawadgo

The USDA recently released data from the 2022 census of agriculture. In 2022, cover crops were planted on 6.2% of the total cropland acres in the South, surpassing the national average of 4.7% for the 48 contiguous states. In fact, the top five counties in the US in terms of percent of cropland in cover crops were all from the South, located in Virginia, Maryland, and Florida. However, there is substantial variation in the adoption of cover crops across counties, as shown in Figure 1. Maryland led the way with 27.3% of its total cropland acres in cover crops, followed by Virginia at 15.2%. On the other end of the spectrum, Louisiana and Arkansas had the lowest rates, at 3.2% and 3.4%, respectively.

Figure 1: 2022 Southern Cover Crop Adoption Rate by County, as Percent of 2022 Cropland

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Data source: 2022 U.S. Census of Agriculture

Between 2017 and 2022, there has been a significant change in cover-crop adoption across the southern states. Texas saw the largest increase in cover-crop area in the US, adding over half a million acres, corresponding to a 1.9 percentage-point increase as a percentage of 2022 cropland. The remaining states in the South combined for a net increase of just fifty-thousand cover crop acres. This was largely due to the disadoption of the practice, as six states observed decreases in cover-crop acreage from 2017-2022. In fact, 49.8% of counties in the southern states saw disadoption over the period – as demonstrated by the blue counties in Figure 2 – disadopting over one million acres of cover crops in total. Overall, the adoption of cover crops decelerated between 2012-2017 and 2017-2022, driven by the increased number of counties that experienced disadoption.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.