Iowa owes its incredibly productive soil to the prairie—the same prairie that farmers have spent decades ripping out, says The Washington Post.
Midwestern growers were long instructed to destroy native grasslands in order to make room for row crops. But a new program called STRIPS (Science-based Trials of Rowcrops Integrated with Prairie Strips), led by researchers at the University of Iowa, hopes to convince the state’s farmers that they can decrease soil erosion and fertilizer runoff by planting native grasslands in between their regular crops. The deep roots of perennial prairie species help keep the soil in place and retain water, while providing food and shelter to endangered pollinators like the Monarch butterfly.
Experts say the program couldn’t come quickly enough. “[Iowa’s] soil is eroding at an alarming rate,” explains the Post. Topsoil was an average of 14 inches deep statewide in the 1800s; now it’s about six.” Every year, Iowa farmers lose over a billion dollars to soil erosion, or $40 an acre.
Since its start in 2012, STRIPS has teamed with 26 farmers to re-plant prairie, while 120 farmers told the group in a survey last year that they intended to plant a total of 400 acres to STRIPS.