#corn belt

[weirdyearbook]

Source details and larger version.

Here's my gallery of unusual imagery from vintage college yearbooks.

[evilhorse]

Here we go. A tongue-lashing from corn belt Lois Lane.

(The Flash #9)

[pirateperch]

Some Upper Corn Belt pics because the beauty of this part of the U.S. is so underappreciated

[clove-pinks]

It's wild that I have this hyper-awareness of the underdrainage used in northwest Ohio, thanks to numerous War of 1812 guys yelling about the horrors of the Black Swamp. I was staring at the steep drainage ditch by the side of the road on what will be my new commute to work (I did not quite escape driving past cornfields on my way to work, even though many cool historic sites are nearby).

The Midwest in general uses subsurface drainage (tile drainage) to create agricultural areas—including where I've lived for the past 10 years! Perhaps because all of Rhode Island is a swamp—there is literally an area called the Great Swamp where a battle took place in King Philip's War, and countless wetlands and marshes—I never noticed that yes, I still technically live in a swamp. I saw the standing water on the fields making vernal pools in spring, and all the birds it would attract, and thought well, that happens everywhere, doesn't it?

(source)

Vast parts of the Corn Belt would be marshes and wetlands, who knew!

[probablyasocialecologist]

To save the Corn Belt, plant trees

Agroforestry is soil friendly and could ultimately be more profitable for farmers.

Native Americans wove agriculture into this landscape, which also teemed with wildlife. They grew corn, beans, and squash in ridged gardens near settlements, and actively managed nut-bearing trees (hickories, walnuts, and acorns), often by thinning out lower-yielding ones to favor the most bountiful.

Everything changed soon after US enclosure in the mid-19th century, when settlers evicted most of the original inhabitants, drained wetlands, razed forests, and ripped into the land with plows. In place of staggering biodiversity, an agricultural empire featuring two main crops ultimately arose, tended with the tools of modern engineering and industry: genetically altered seeds, insect- and weed-killing chemicals, synthetic and mined fertilizers, and massive tractors and combines.

Reintroducing trees could bring big benefits to a reeling area—and to all of us who rely on it for sustenance, says Eric Toensmeier, senior fellow at the climate think tank Project Drawdown and a lecturer at Yale. Trees’ roots dig deep beneath the soil surface and fan out laterally, providing an anchor during heavy rain. They suck up nutrients all year long, keeping fertilizer from leaching away and polluting water. Trees shield crops and soil from the wind. And they both build carbon in the soil as their leaves drop and decompose, and also store it in their roots, trunks, and branches.

The intermixing of food-bearing trees and annual crops—an ancient practice known as agroforestry—could ultimately be more profitable for farmers than the current corn-soybean rotation in the Midwest, says Kevin Wolz, a farmer and the co–executive director of the Wisconsin-based Savanna Institute. “We certainly have more water here to grow trees compared to out West,” where a series of severe droughts has put pressure on California’s almond and pistachio groves, he says.

Wolz co-authored a peer-reviewed 2018 paper that found that growing black walnut groves in rows between fields of corn and soybeans—a practice known as alley cropping—would deliver more profits to landowners than field-crop-only farming on nearly a quarter of the region’s land. Other tree varieties, including hazelnuts, Chinese chestnuts, apples, and black currants, could work, too.

[doomhope]

How Corn Makes It Feel More Humid

What is corn sweat, and how does it affect the weather?

The Corn Belt is making it rain.

thought this was interesting--corn impacts the microclimate where it's planted, and the macroclimate when planted en masse

[melancholiads]

welcome to nowhere, MO. you aren’t really here

[rjzimmerman]

The Corn Belt will get hotter. Farmers will have to adapt.

The Midwest will become an "Extreme Heat Belt." How will corn farmers survive?

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

Researchers predict that by 2053, a large swath of the Midwest will experience at least one day with temperatures of 125 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter. According to the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit climate change research group, Smith’s farm could one day be part of an “Extreme Heat Belt,” a region that would include Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

Roughly the same region claims the name Corn Belt due to its output of corn, estimated at 10 billion bushels each year. These impending high temperatures will change the region’s economic and agricultural future, with growers already seeing drops in corn production this year. Changes to corn’s genetic makeup have increased its resilience to drought in recent years, but studies show that increasing heat is attacking soil conditions and, in turn, corn yield.

The future of Corn Belt and Midwest agriculture will get hotter and hotter, making each year more fragile and leaving farmers and growers adapting to extreme weather. Some states are even planting trees to protect livestock from the impending heat, which has been killing more and more animals each year. Farmers, growers, and scientists are now testing new grains, crops, and changes to land management to prepare for the impending wave of dangerous and destructive heat expected to accumulate in the middle of the country.

Corn, grains, and soybeans take up a large portion of the nation’s agricultural acreage and are annual crops. Each year, money is sunk into planting, growing, and harvesting these crops, only to do it all over the next year. To combat this cycle, a new grain is growing in portions of the Corn Belt.

Kernza is domesticated wheatgrass that grows perennially and can be harvested for 10 to 20 years after being planted. It is often used as a substitute for grains in bread and beer production. This perennial plant is cropping up across the pockets of the Corn Belt and Midwest, from Minnesota to Colorado.

Tim Crews, chief scientist at the Land Institute, a nonprofit agricultural research group in Salina, Kansas, said there are no silver bullets to make current crop systems adapt to impending, destructive heat. Crews is part of a larger effort to shift away from annual crops and plant more perennials like Kernza through the Perennial Agriculture Project, to make future crops more resilient to heat.