Iowa Farmers are Planting Prairie in Their Fields

Cornucopia’s Take: More and more farmers, and researchers, are realizing the value of wild strips of land for soil and wildlife health.  It’s a sharp contrast to the approach taken by conventional ag for decades.

Iowa farmers ripped out prairie; now some hope it can save them
Washington Post
by Darryl Fears

WRIGHT COUNTY, Iowa — There’s a wild presence in Tim Smith’s corn and soybean field that most farmers kill on sight.

Smith made his way toward it, hoisting his long legs over row after row of soybean plants under a baking mid-morning sun. “It’s right over there,” he said. He stopped at the edge of a Midwestern prairie, a thicket of tall flowers and grasses more frightening to farmers than any horror movie madman lurking in a barn with a chain saw.

Most growers say prairie is a nuisance that can choke crops. But not Smith. He is proud of the three acres he planted in the middle of one of the most productive farms in the county. He was there to show it off, not spray it.

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