Effectiveness of cover crops and no-till as a regenerative agricultural approach in rain-fed and irrigated Southern Plains of the U.S.

Growing pressure on cotton systems in the Southern Plains of the United States from climate change, water scarcity, and volatile input costs has increased interest in regenerative practices such as no-till and cover crops. Study objectives center on whether those practices can improve on-farm profitability across three locations in the Southern Plains: southwestern Oklahoma, the Rolling Plains of Texas, and southwest Kansas for irrigated systems, and southeast Kansas for dryland systems. Enterprise budgets from extension sources and experimental field trials were used to construct conventional tillage, no-till, and no-till with cover crop systems for representative sites in each state. Benefit–cost analysis quantified Net Present Value (NPV), Benefit–Cost Ratio (BCR), and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) over a 10-year horizon under three cost structures: total costs, deterministic variable costs, and stochastic variable costs. A Monte Carlo framework with 100 iterations per practice incorporated stochastic yield and price, with trend adjustments from USDA baseline projections. Stochastic dominance and one-way ANOVA with Tukey HSD were applied to compare complete simulated distributions and test mean differences across practices within each state–cost scenario, and a sensitivity analysis on the assumed probability distribution (normal, triangular, and student-t) evaluated robustness. Results show consistent advantages for irrigated regenerative systems. In Texas, irrigated no-till with cover crops (NTCCI) ranked highest, while Kansas favored irrigated no-till without cover crops (NTI); Oklahoma showed small but meaningful gains for both NTI and NTCCI relative to conventional tillage. Many NPVs were negative under total-cost assumptions, reflecting recent drought conditions and high production expenses in the region. Yet, BCR and IRR results showed conservative systems to be competitive or superior to conventional tillage when variable costs are the focus. Findings highlight the potential for no-till and cover crop systems to improve economic resilience in Southern Plains cotton while also supporting longer-term soil and water conservation goals. Policy and program support that reduces short-run adoption costs could help producers capture these long-run benefits and encourage broader adoption of regenerative practices.