A perspective on changes across the U.S. Corn Belt
Date
2020
Authors
Hunt, Eric D
Birge, Hannah E
Laingen, Christopher
McMechan, Justin
Baule, William
Connor, Tom
Major Professor
Advisor
Committee Member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
© 2020 The Author(s)
Authors
Person
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Organizational Unit
Journal Issue
Is Version Of
Versions
Series
Department
Agronomy
Abstract
Corn (Zea mays L.) has long been a staple crop of the Corn Belt of the U.S., which today extends latitudinally from central Nebraska to central Ohio and longitudinally from northeast Kansas to the eastern Dakotas and western Minnesota. However, the production of corn in the Corn Belt has been transformed in both magnitude and spatial extent since the 1960s. Previous research has shown that there has been an overall increase in the number of acres planted to corn across
the Corn Belt (e.g. Johnston 2014, Lark et al 2015), with a pronounced increase in the eastern Dakotas and modest increases across the historical Corn Belt, which includes most of the states of Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa (i.e. the ‘I’ states). Much of the intensification across the Dakotas can be attributed to the conversion of grasslands and small grains croplands (e.g. wheat and barley; Lin et al 2016; Laingen 2017, Wimberly et al 2017) for corn and soybean (Glycine max L.). Some of this change can be attributed to government programs (Laingen 2011) and to the substantial increase for corn ethanol in areas with traditionally lower corn yields (Murphy et al 2011). Recent research also highlights a north and westward spatial shift in the Corn Belt (Hart and Lindberg 2014; Laingen 2017, Auch et al 2018) such that the geographic mean of the Corn Belt has shifted over 200 km northwest since the 1950s (Laingen 2017).
Comments
This article is published as Hunt, Eric D., Hannah E. Birge, Christopher Laingen, Mark A. Licht, Justin McMechan, William Baule, and Tom Connor. "A perspective on changes across the US Corn Belt." Environmental Research Letters 15, no. 7 (2020): 071001. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab9333. Posted with permission.
Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.