Research and Science

Crop Sequence Boundaries

Crop Sequence Boundaries banner

The Crop Sequence Boundaries (CSB) developed with USDA's Economic Research Service, produces estimates of field boundaries, crop acreage, and crop rotations across the contiguous United States. It uses satellite imagery with other public data and is open source allowing users to conduct area and statistical analysis of planted U.S. commodities and provides insight on farmer cropping decisions.

NASS needed a representative field to predict crop planting based on common crop rotations such as corn-soy and ERS is using this product to study changes in farm management practices like tillage or cover cropping over time.

CSB represents non-confidential single crop field boundaries over a set time frame. It does not contain personal identifying information. The boundaries captured are of crops grown only, not ownership boundaries or tax parcels (unit of property). The data are from satellite imagery and publicly available data, it does not come from producers or agencies like the Farm Service Agency.


  • The Interactive Map is temporarily out of service. It will be updated with the 2017-2024 CSB data when resources become available.
    • Notes:
    • The 2017-2024 CSB released March 12, 2025.
    • In order to maintain consistency with historical data the 2017-2024 CSB used a 30-meter resampled version of the 10-meter 2024 CDL.
    • Current version is v2024.
    • The current archive of these datasets span 8-year time frames for all years from 2008 to current. Custom time frames can be created using the Github code.
    Publications:
    Datasets:

    Eight-year time frames from 2008 to present.

    Additional Files:

    Contact: sm.nass.rdd.gib@usda.gov for additional support.

    Last Modified: 03/17/2025