Spatial Changes of Corn and Soybean Planting Areas in the United States from 2008 to 2018

Corn and soybeans are the most important grain crop for human food, livestock feed and bio-product support. The United States contributes 46% of the global corn and 33% of the global soybeans. Cropping variation in corn and soybean would greatly disturb global food security. Understanding how the cultivated pattern of corn and soybean changes and their relationships is of great reference value for forecast and assessment of global food industry and futures trading. The primary objective is to identify the spatial pattern of corn and soybean and their rotation characteristics over time in the contiguous United States. The paper provides an accessible framework to quantify the temporal change in spatial cropping patterns of corn and soybean by cropping intensity and gravity center of cropping areas based on county scale in the contiguous United States for the years 2008-2018. CropScape provides National Crop Date Layer (CDL) for each year since 2008 and some areas early in 1997, which is an open web-service with 30m pixel resolution released by the USDA National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS). The resulting patterns highlight the distinct patterns of corn and soybean planting variability change as well as their crop rotation. A further explore is try to find the drivers of which crop to plant in projecting the future changes.