Cover crop use in soybean fields is evolving to a standard system. This system plants cereal rye after harvest in the fall and plants soybeans early in the spring. This system typically yields the same as systems without cover crops and has reduced herbicide costs. Despite these advances, this cover crop system requires revenue from cost-share or carbon programs to have the same returns as systems without cover crops. We describe the economics of this system using results from Precision Conservation Management (PCM).
