Cover Crops in Dryland Cotton Production Systems in Texas Rolling Pains: Short- Vs. Long-Term Economic Benefits.

Cover crops provide potential economic and agronomic benefits and the adoption has been promoted by USDA/NRCS Soil Health Initiative in recent decades. Many farmers are adding cover crops to their existing cropping systems in arid and semi-arid regions of U.S. Several farm-level studies have shown that cover crops made no negative impact on yields of cash crops but might increase the production costs, particularly regarding planting, maintenance and termination of the cover crops. Moreover, some agronomic benefits of adopting cover crops are invisible and the economic value is hard to estimate and project for a long-term. To investigate the agronomic and economic benefits, we initiated the cover crop studies on both dryland and irrigated continuous cotton production in Texas Rolling Plains. Treatments in the dryland systems included conventional tillage, no-till, and no-till with four common cover crops (winter wheat, crimson clover, Austrian winter field pea, and hairy vetch) as well as a treatment with mixed cover crop species. To quantify the benefits of cover crops in both short and long-term, we utilized a decision support tool designed by NRCS. The results show the estimated costs for cover crops was $21/ac on average with moderate variations. Regarding the benefits, the direct nutrient credit was $38/ac; the reduced herbicide/insecticide/fungicide benefit was $12/ac; and the erosion reduction benefit was $7/ac. The 50-year long-term simulation showed a net benefit of $97/ac/yr, which was much greater than the short-term benefits, $37/ac/yr. Therefore, both short- and long-term benefits of cover crops should be considered and balanced for developing sustainable cropping systems.