EXPERT Q&A

More than two decades ago, Joan Iverson Nassauer, professor of landscape architecture at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, helped envision a new future for Corn Belt agriculture. And not just any future, but one that could be reasonably realized by 2025.

Instead of focusing solely on corn and soybean production—as farmers were incentivized by federal policy to do—Nassauer and colleagues analyzed practices to improve biodiversity, reduce downstream flooding and prevent pollution from runoff. This would improve not only the ecological health of the Corn Belt, but could also help better protect the people living there and around the country.

Cancer has been linked to pollution from industrialized agriculture and Iowa, which leads the nation in corn production, also has the country’s second highest cancer rates. Youth cancer rates in Iowa and the Corn Belt are also increasing faster than elsewhere in the United States, according to a recent report from The Washington Post.

Nassauer and colleagues published their vision for 2025 in 2002. They now have a new study comparing their alternatives with what has actually happened to Iowa agriculture and rural communities.

Read the full Q&A on the Michigan News website.

Study: Conservation practices in 2025 scenarios: Implications for future US agricultural policy