Iowa’s Climate-Change Wisdom
KEY IN THIS ARTICLE IS THE “Versaland agroforestry farm in Johnson County, Iowa. In less than three years, a young farmer named Grant Schultz has planted more than 30,000 trees, introduced cover crops, composting and multispecies grazing, and transformed a once degraded industrial corn farm into a vibrant carbon capturing and storing ecosystem. Mr. Schultz is not alone; other farmers in Johnson County have joined a University of Iowa initiative to plant fields with perennial miscanthus grass, as part of a soil carbon sequestration and biomass program aimed at achieving 40 percent renewable energy consumption on campus by 2020.
In effect, Mr. Schultz and Versaland have completely shifted the climate change narrative in the heartland. Today’s farmers can play a key role in climate solutions.”
