The ‘stock cropper’ method—raising chickens, hogs, and sheep between rows of grains—promises much-needed change to the farm landscape. Now it’s on the verge of scaling up.
Researchers want to know how co-locating solar and crops — a practice known as "agrivoltaics" — could benefit farmers and be a salve to a growing strain in the Corn Belt, where rural residents and towns are pushing back on solar projects that can often take farmland out of production.
Climate change is redrawing the agricultural map of the United States. As corn becomes less economically viable with changing Midwestern weather patterns, farmers look to a more diverse future.
New research finds massive soil loss across the Midwest, which sends more pollutants into the water, dust into the air, and carbon into the atmosphere. Changing farm practices and improved technology could reverse the trend.
Scientists have found that the Corn Belt region of the U.S. Midwest, which produces 75% of U.S. corn, has lost around 35% of its most fertile topsoil since European colonization in the 1600s.
Lisa Schulte Moore used to have to explain the benefits of her work to farmers in the Corn Belt. Now, over half of farmers in Iowa are willing to plant prairie strips next to cropland to improve soil health and water quality and mitigate climate change.
