Featured · Long read 14 min · May 12
The farmers quietly rewriting the rules of corn.
Twelve growers in southern Iowa are working with native perennials, and in the process, redefining what a cornfield can be.
By Maya Okafor →
Stories, science, and field notes on regenerative farming — from the farmers rethinking corn in Iowa to the cooperatives reforesting the Sahel.
Regenerative agriculture isn’t a single technique — it’s a set of principles that work together. Read these five short primers and you’ll have the literacy to follow the rest of the topic.
Read the whole primerThe square foot under your feet contains more living organisms than there are humans on earth.
Bare soil is exposed soil. Cover crops, perennials, and residues protect the system.
Monocultures break ecological cycles. Diversity, in space and in time, rebuilds them.
Well-managed grazing closes the nutrient loop and accelerates soil recovery.
Tillage breaks the fungal network that does the slow work of building structure.
Five years into a perennial rotation, the soil microbiome looks different. Researchers are scrambling to catalogue what.
Quietly, the policy fight has shifted from acres and prices to aquifers and rainfall.
Dr. Wes Jackson’s perennial-grain dream is finally getting its day.
How a co-op of 38 farmers cut nitrogen runoff by half in three seasons.
The climate world wants soil to draw down carbon. The science is messier than the marketing.
The Great Green Wall is decades behind schedule. But the smaller, quieter projects underneath it are working.
One reported story and three things worth reading. Sundays only. No platitudes.