Cotton is one of the major crops in the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) of the U.S. Lower Mississippi River Valley region. Because cotton production doesn’t leave a lot of crop residue in the field, low soil organic matter levels are common. While the benefits of crop rotation are well known, cotton is often grown year after year in the same fields for economic reasons. Soils in the region are generally quite variable, with areas of very high sand content. Winter cover crops and reduced tillage are two practices suggested to increase organic matter and improve overall soil health and beginning in 2019, a long-term study of soil health and cotton production was initiated at the University of Missouri Fisher Delta Research, Extension and Education Center (FDREEC) at Portageville. The goal of the study is to identify improvements in soil health associated with reduced tillage and cover crops in a continuous cotton production system in the NMSZ. The objective of this report was to determine the impact of cover crops and soil apparent electrical conductivity (EC_a) on cotton development and yield. Soils in the region are generally low in salinity and EC_a is an effective way of identifying the textural variation within fields. In 2019, the field was treated uniformly, and the cotton was harvested with a spindle picker equipped with a yield monitor with separate output for each row. In addition, EC_a was measured on 3.9 m transects. Following harvest, the field was divided into four replications of three tillage treatments, with conventional tillage, reduced tillage, and reduced tillage with a winter cover crop. Plots were 7.7 m wide, resulting in two passes of EC_a measurements in each plot. In addition to yield, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and normalized difference red edge (NDRE) were observed multiple times during each growing season because reductions in crop growth were observed in the sandier portions of the field, even before drought stress was apparent. Yield, NDVI, and NDRE for the three treatments were analyzed with an EC_a covariate to separate the soil texture effects from the effects of the three treatments. Repeating this study for multiple years will provide beneficial information for cotton producers in areas beyond the NMSZ.