Midwest Farmers Using Cover Crops Take Small Yield Hit 

Most farm fields in the U.S. Midwest lay bare over the winter. From the time of harvest until the spring planting season, topsoil is left exposed. Wind, snowmelt, and rain can remove topsoil from fields. Cover crops are planted by farmers between growing seasons to to protect soil, but planting cover crops has also been found to reduce yields of primary cash crops. 

This map shows the yield impacts for corn (maize) fields with cover crops in 2019 and 2020. Red and orange areas on the map show fields with yield reductions in response to cover crop adoption. The map was created using a dataset of cover crop presence between 2000 to 2021. The dataset fuses vegetation greenness data from Landsat and NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to identify fields using cover crops. 


For more information 
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150887 

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