Trip to Iowa

Rob was in Iowa today for a meeting of an advisory committee on which he serves. This is a photo of an experiment that involves planting strips of prairie in a corn/soybean field. The tall grass in the foreground is bluestem. The bright green area to the left is soybeans. The prairie strips greatly reduce erosion. The big question is whether the benefits from reduce erosion will be large enough to compensate for land taken out of production.

If you'd like to learn more about this, see the article on the STRIPS project on the Wallace Chair web site at   http://www.wallacechair.iastate.edu/.