Double-Cropping Wheat and Soybeans in the Southeast: Input Use and Patterns of Adoption

摘要

Southeastern farmers have increased their double-cropped wheat and soybean acreage by nearly half since 1970. Double-cropping, the raising of two crops per year in the same field, helps raise producer revenues and reduce total input use, since it encourages conservation tillage by farmers. But double-cropping seems to make soybean yields more variable and has helped to quadruple stockpiles of surplus soft red winter wheat since 1970. The report gives State data for double-cropping and examines the factors that caused the year-to-year expansions and contractions in double-cropped acres since the seventies.