WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A five-year, multi-state research project, which is focusing on Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, has been looking at alternative crops. 

The Diverse Corn Belt Project’s more than 30 partners are exploring diversification at the farm, market, and landscape level that can broaden new opportunities for Midwest farmers and rural communities, said Linda Prokopy, Purdue University adjunct professor of horticulture and landscape architecture, who leads the five-year, $10 million project.

J. Arbuckle, Iowa State University professor of rural sociology, who is one of the 30-plus project partners, told Farm World, the social science component of the project consists of agricultural economists, planners, rural sociologists, and other social scientists. 

The Diverse Corn Belt team first came together through a shared recognition that advancing more diverse, resilient cropping systems in the Midwest requires coordination across disciplines, sectors, and geographies, said Emily DeaKyne, Diverse Corn Belt project manager. 

“The project builds on long-standing relationships among researchers at land grant universities, nonprofit partners, extension professionals, and farmer networks across Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa,” she told Farm World. “Many team members had previously collaborated on USDA-funded projects related to conservation and soil health, creating a track record of working effectively across institutions.” 

She said the 30-partner team was intentionally assembled to bridge research, practice, and policy, ensuring the work is both scientifically rigorous and grounded in real-world application: “At its core, the goal of Diverse Corn Belt is to inform the ongoing conversation about agricultural diversification with stakeholder-informed and science-based information.”

She added, “Many members of the team have spent years working in the agricultural conservation sector, and came to this effort with a shared concern: the current state of conservation agriculture is not moving the needle at the scale or speed needed. 

“Incremental changes alone are not enough,” she said. “Commodity production has become increasingly risky, with farmers facing rising input costs, low and volatile prices, extreme weather, and unstable markets. These pressures expose a lack of resilience and diminishing returns in systems largely built on monocultures.” According to Practical Farmers of Iowa, a monoculture is the dominant, industrial agricultural practice of growing a single crop, specifically corn or soybeans, over large areas of land.

In response, she said, the Diverse Corn Belt effort is grounded in a more transformative, systems-based approach, one that explores how agricultural diversification can improve farm resilience; strengthen local and regional food systems; support rural community vitality; and reduce the ecological impacts associated with monoculture-based cropping systems. 

“Diverse Corn Belt research is designed to meet a clear need for more systematic analysis and assessment of pathways toward what we describe as resilient intensification at both the farm and landscape scale,” she added.

Last November, for example, the Diverse Corn Belt Project’s Reimagining Agricultural Diversity (RAD) Teams in Iowa used AI (artificial intelligence) to turn rural landscape words and concepts into images that foster understanding and depth of discussion.

After years of discussion and analysis, the project’s focus group of Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa farmers recently outlined four key policy pathways: improving crop insurance; updating conservation programs; investing in processing and market infrastructure; and expanding public purchasing of diverse local food, project officials said. 

Arbuckle said a major finding of the project was that both farmers and major agricultural and rural stakeholders said they believe additional diversification of crop and livestock systems would be highly beneficial to the Corn Belt’s farming and rural communities, especially concerning economic, environmental, and quality of life outcomes. 

However, he said participants in the research and stakeholder engagement activities also identified numerous barriers to diversification, including lack of markets and facilitating policies, and resistance from entities that benefit from the status quo. 

“The project recently published a policy brief based on the research and stakeholder engagement activities that presents findings and outlines potential opportunities to support diversification of crop and livestock systems, and development of associated supply chains,” he said. The policy brief can be found at: publications.cast-science.org.

DeaKyne said what’s important is this work is not about replacing corn and soybean systems, which will continue to play a central role in Midwestern agriculture: “Rather, it is about identifying practical opportunities and acknowledging real challenges for integrating more diverse agricultural systems into the existing commodity landscape in ways that work for farmers, markets, and ecosystems.”

“Ultimately, this approach ensures that our policy pathways are not developed in isolation, but are co-informed by the people most directly impacted, leading to recommendations that are both actionable and scalable across the Corn Belt,” she said. 

“As the project moves forward, the team will focus on engaging policymakers and decision makers in Washington, D.C., and across state governments to share findings, and elevate the voices of the farmers and stakeholders who helped shape these recommendations, helping to ensure that future policy is grounded in on the ground realities,” she added.