Are Cover Crops Worth It? Assessing Soil Benefits and Production Costs in a Corn and Soybean Rotation in Northwestern Mississippi.

Efforts to improve surface water quality in the Mississippi River Basin have focused on minimizing soil disturbance and erosion potential in row‐crop production. Two management strategies that reduce soil losses include reducing tillage operations and planting cover crops. Despite the demonstrated conservation benefits of these strategies, adoption rates among Southeastern row‐crop producers remain low. Tradeoffs between higher costs of production needed to implement these strategies in rotational crop systems and environmental benefits require a more thorough analysis in this area. To assess environmental benefits and economic costs, six agronomic systems were evaluated in a corn and soybean rotation in Coffeeville, Mississippi from 2015 to 2018. Each system included differing winter conditions: bare soil (weedy vegetation controlled with pre‐emergent soil residual herbicides), winter annuals (weedy vegetation not controlled with herbicides), and planted cover crop. Each winter condition was applied under both conventional and no‐tillage operations. Preliminary results indicate that estimated soil loss was reduced in no‐tillage cover crop systems compared to conventional tillage bare systems, while 2017 soybean production costs were greatest in systems with conventional tillage and pre‐emergent soil residual herbicide application. Results suggest that conservation strategies, such as reduced tillage and cover crops, limit erosion and can be implemented without adversely affecting producer costs.