Who “Designs” the Agricultural Landscape?
Laura L. Jackson
ABSTRACT In the United States, the landscape most respon-
sible for producing animal protein is the Upper Midwest “Corn
Belt.” Currently, this region is challenged by poor water quality,
declining biological diversity, and decaying rural communities. It
is also the region most responsible for the zone of hypoxia in the
Gulf of Mexico. This paper examines the question of who has
designed the current agricultural landscape in the Corn Belt, and
how it might best be re-designed to better serve broader public
interests. Several modeling studies indicate that the region
would benefit both economically and ecologically from increased
perennial cover on the landscape. However, farmers’ options
for meaningful land use change are significantly constrained by
powerful market forces far removed from the region. Federal
conservation programs have been poorly funded, and generally
make minor improvements to conventional production systems,
while commodity policy is heavily influenced by agribusiness in-
terests. Metropolitan consumers can demand greater account-
ability from the global agribusiness corporations responsible for
the design of the Corn Belt and work for food and agricultural
policy that supports ecosystem health, public health, and health
of rural communities.
KEYWORDS Agriculture, conservation, biological diversity,
landscape ecology
“The landscape of any farm is the farmer’s portrait of
himself.”
—Aldo Leopold, “The Farmer as Conservationist”1939
© 2008 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
S een through the lens of an ecologist, the vast ex-
panse of corn and soybean plants growing in the
Midwestern United States is the base of a food web that
begins with the soil and the sun and ends with the eve-
Landscape Journal 27:1–08 ISSN 0277-2426
ning meal. The Midwest is the most important source
of animal protein in the United States. Corn (primarily
carbohydrate energy) and soybeans (protein and oil)
are the main ingredients for producing meat, eggs, and
dairy under the current food system. Because of low
transportation costs and subsidized infrastructure, ani-
mal feeding can be separated from the climate and soils
necessary for plant growth. Thus, in addition to the live-
stock raised in the Midwest, millions of hogs, cattle, and
poultry are raised outside of the Midwest in arid and in-
fertile places such as Utah, New Mexico, eastern Colo-
rado, and West Texas. Similarly, the easy and inexpen-
sive transport of food allows millions of human beings
to live in high concentrations (metropolitan areas) far
higher than the ecological carrying capacity of their city
or region. For a majority of Americans living in metro-
politan areas, this distance between population centers
and farms creates the illusion of a limitless food supply
devoid of ecological consequences.
The subject of this paper is the Upper Midwest, or
Corn Belt, of the United States. The landscape is pri-
marily composed of corn, soybean monocultures, and
the livestock that feed on them. A whole economy, in-
frastructure, financial system, and regional identity is
defined largely by corn-soybeans and livestock. For the
last 30 years, critics of this system of agriculture have
maintained that it is failing ecologically, economically,
and socially (Pollan 2006; Schlosser 2001; Soule and
Piper 1992; Jackson 1994; Jackson 1980; Berry 1977),
while providing deceptively inexpensive food for a na-
tional and global market.
Because this special issue of Landscape Journal on
metropolitan landscape ecology aspires to encompass
the full ecological scope of the metropolitan landscape,
it must include the agricultural regions from which
metropolitan areas are fed. Such an examination can be
productive, in part because it forces the disciplines of
landscape architecture and landscape ecology to find a
common language and framework.
The differences between these two disciplines
start with their respective motivations. Ecologists study
landscape patterns because they have functional con-
sequences for animal movement, gene flow, viability of
plant and animal populations, biogeochemical cycling,
and other significant ecosystem processes (Turner et al.
2001). Ecologists do not address aesthetic issues or
human quality of life as landscape architects do. The
disciplines also differ in their attention to mechanism
or agency. From the perspective of an ecologist, land-
scapes exhibit quantifiable patterns shaped by vari-
ous forces such as climate, topography, geology, soils,
disturbance processes such as fire and wind, and the
activities of animals and plants. Landscapes that are
dominated by human activity may be characterized as
“anthropogenic” or be said to exhibit an “economic-
ecological syndrome” but are rarely if ever described as
part of a “design” implying human intention and fore-
thought (Turner et al. 2001). A major undergraduate
ecology text highlights the contrast between creation
of patterns in art and creation of patterns on the land-
scape (Smith and Smith 2003):
This patchwork of different types of land cover is called
a mosaic, using the analogy of mosaic art . . . The art-
ist creates the emerging pattern, defining boundaries
by using different shapes and colors of materials to
construct the mosaic. In a similar fashion, the land-
scape mosaic is a product of the boundaries defined
by changes in the physical and biological structure of
the communities that form its elements. . . .(368)
Although ecologists and landscape architects
study landscapes for different reasons, they may have
a productive discussion about how a landscape pattern
was created and how it can be influenced. The question
of agency, if posed jointly by landscape architects and
ecologists, could speak directly to public policy across
a wide spectrum of concerns: soil and water conserva-
tion, wildlife and open space conservation, the health
of rural communities, energy production from biofuels,
and the epidemic of obesity seen in both rural and met-
ropolitan populations. When the causes of a landscape
pattern are poorly understood, public policy under-
taken to correct it will be mistaken as well.
This paper is an attempt to bridge the disciplines
of ecology and landscape architecture by first concep-
tualizing the Corn Belt as a “designed” place rather than
simply a pattern shaped by various forces. Following a
review of some of its ecological and economic conse-
quences, I examine the relative power of farmers, fed-
eral farm policy, and markets in determining the “de-
sign” of the farm landscape. Several lines of evidence
suggest that the agricultural landscape and production
system is designed primarily by global agribusiness cor-
porations. Conservation policy will move forward only
when consumers and taxpayers shrug off the myth of
24 Landscape Journal 27:1–08
the farmer as designer and pressure agribusiness in-
terests to take responsibility for a healthy agricultural
landscape and healthy food.
THE PROTEIN PRODUCTION LANDSCAPE
According to the latest US Agricultural Census (2002),
88 percent of Iowa’s 59,000 square miles is in farms, and
72 percent of that farmland is planted in corn and soy-
beans (US-NASS 2006). However, for the northern two-
thirds of the state, where the action of the last glaciation
was felt most strongly, almost 95 percent of the land is
in farms and 98 percent of that is in corn and soybeans.
To gain a proper sense of these numbers, consider this:
from the city of Dubuque on the eastern edge of Iowa,
it is possible to cross the entire state, driving west for
6 hours, going 65 miles per hour, and see only corn and
soybeans—virtually no pasture, wetlands, prairie, or
forest beyond the slender ribbon on either side of rivers.
An aerial photo of north central Iowa (Figure 1) illus-
trates this pattern. From Iowa’s western border, one can
continue driving westward across part of Nebraska for
another 3 hours, and from the eastern border one can
drive across Illinois and Indiana for at least another 3
hours before emerging from the Corn Belt.
If the Corn Belt is designed for anything, it is for the
production of protein. Iowa is first in the nation among
states in the aerial extent of corn and soybean produc-
tion, with roughly 25 million acres devoted to these two
crops. Iowa also consistently ranks first or second in av-
erage per-acre yields (US-NASS 2006). About 54 percent
of US corn and soybeans is fed to livestock, roughly 18
percent is exported to other countries (where it is typi-
cally fed to livestock), and the rest is made into etha-
nol (14 percent), vegetable oil, or food products such
as starch, high fructose corn syrup, and food additives.
Iowa is ranked first among states in the value of exports
of soy, feed grains, live animals, and meat (USDA-ERS
2005). Once Iowa soy and feed grains are loaded on a
truck or train car from the local grain elevator, they be-
come a global commodity that cannot be traced. The
vast cattle feedlots of the Great Plains of Texas, Okla-
 Figure 1. Aerial photo of north-central Iowa on July 11, 2005, showing predominance of corn (dark) and soybean (light) land uses and
absence of other crops or natural lands, over a 324 square mile area (Iowa Geographic Map Server 2006).

homa, Colorado, and Kansas are a likely destination
for some of this production (USDA-ERS 2005). Increas-
ingly, however, corn-ethanol plants are competing for
corn and consume a rising proportion of production.
Currently many or most commercial-sized farms
are specialized, that is they either sell grain directly
(“cash grain”) or livestock, but not both. Instead, live-
stock are raised independently by other specialists
whose only job is to breed, feed, medicate, and dispose
of waste. Ninety-nine percent or more of all hogs, tur-
keys, dairy cattle, and beef cattle are produced in con-
finement facilities, although most cattle spend a few
months of their life on pasture before going to a feed lot
for fattening (Kellogg 2002).
To produce the protein, three other support ele-
ments must be added: fertilizers, pesticides, and sub-
surface drainage (Figure 2). Even on the richest soils,
fertilizers are needed to replace the nutrients lost in

Jackson 25

Figure 2. Pipe with running water (foreground) is draining an Iowa
cornfield in early spring. Subsurface drainage warms the soils,
allows field operations earlier in the year, and improves rooting
conditions for crop plants, but also increases the rate of nitrate
leaching. (Photograph courtesy of Amy Carolan)
crop harvest. Soybeans are capable of fixing nitrogen
from the air, but produce very little in excess of their
own needs. Iowa farmers apply about 650-million kilo-
grams of nitrogen fertilizer each year (USNASS 2006).
In monocultures or simple two-year crop rotations,
herbicides and insecticides are required to control pest
species. And for a variety of reasons, water is drained
from fields using perforated polyethylene tubing buried
about one meter below the surface.
Prior to the mid-1950s, the Corn Belt was still a
protein production landscape, but it looked differ-
ent. Row crops (corn, then corn and soybeans after the
late 1940s) occupied closer to 50 percent of the land in
farms instead of close to 90–100 percent. The other half
of the farmland consisted of a diverse array of small
grains, hay, pasture, and earlier in the century, wild hay
or prairie (Jackson 2002) (Figure 3). The farms were
smaller and more numerous: 203,159 farms in 1950,
with less than 0.1 percent greater than 1000 acres (Iowa
Yearbook of Agriculture) versus 90,972 in 1997 with 60
26 Landscape Journal 27:1–08
percent greater than 1000 acres (USNASS 2006). Prior to
the late 1950s, virtually all farms were diversified, that
is they raised crops and fed them to at least one species
of livestock (and often three or more). Most grain, hay,
and pasture raised on the farm were not sold, but fed to
livestock.
The conversion from diversified crop / livestock
farming to specialized farms (those raising either grain
or concentrated livestock) was both an economic and
an ecological revolution. It freed the farmer from many
physically demanding daily chores and precipitated
increases in the size of machinery, fields, and farms
(Strange 1988; Ray 2004). It was accompanied by greater
land surface area devoted to annual plants, greater per-
centage of tilled ground, large increases in the need for
nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides, and more extensive
subsurface drainage of fields (Jackson 2002; Dinnes et
al. 2002; Karlen et al. 2006). Animal waste in confined
livestock operations became more of a disposal prob-
lem than a nutrient resource (Jackson et al. 2000).
Consequences for Ecosystem Health
Ecological effects of industrial agriculture have been
well-documented in many books and articles (e.g.,
Soule and Piper 1992; Matson et al. 1997; Tilman et al.
2002; Green et al. 2005). These include a “hardening” of
the matrix landscape around prairie fragments (Figure
4) which increased negative edge effects and reduced
the likelihood of movement of animals, pollen and
seeds from one prairie remnant to the next. Currently
less than 0.1 percent of Iowa’s tallgrass prairies remain
(Smith 1992). Grassland nesting birds such as mead-
owlarks and bobolinks have been in decline since the
1960s, probably due to the loss of agricultural grass-
lands (Herkert 1995). The greater proportion of land in
annual row crops meant that more land was bare and
vulnerable to the forces of erosion for nine months out
of each year particularly when crop plants are small and
rain events are intense (Figure 5). Effects on the physi-
cal structure of and chemical reactions in the soil were
equally profound. Soil organic matter—the building
block of soil humus, fertility, and beneficial soil structure
Figure 3. Total area of row crop
(filled circles: corn prior to the
1940s, corn and soybeans more re-
cently) and sod crops (open triangles:
small grains such as barley, oats
and wheat, and hay crops such as
clover, timothy and alfalfa) from
1860 to 2000. Row and sod crops
maintained roughly equal area until
the late 1950s due to their use in
building up nitrogen fertility using
legumes and animal manure, and in
weed control. After 1957 farmers
substituted soy for sod crops, re-
duced or eliminated livestock on the
farm, and purchased fertilizers and
pesticides. (Diagram by author)

Figure 4. Clay Prairie next to the Butler

Center Cemetery, in Butler County,
Iowa. The remnant prairie (indicated by
the black box) is 2 acres and is
bordered on three sides by crops or a
road. Less than 0.1 percent of
the original tallgrass prairie remains
in Iowa (Smith 1992), so small and
isolated fragments such as this one
are treasured (Iowa Geographic Map
Server 2006).

Jackson 27
accumulated under prairie grasses for several thousand
years—declined faster (Lal 2004; Karlen et al. 2006).
Streams, already highly modified by plowing the
prairie, were narrowed and straightened (Figure 6). The
Mississippi and Missouri Rivers were channelized and
fitted with lock and dam systems for barge transport
of agricultural inputs and products (Figure 7). Sub-
surface drainage also speeds water towards the large
rivers rather than holding it in wetlands. The cost of
flood damage has risen throughout the century as the
landscape has lost wetlands and vegetation that holds
and slows down water flow (Hey and Phillippi 1995). In-
creased flood volumes interact with and intensify water
pollution by mobilizing more sediments and associated
pollutants.
Leaching of nitrogen from corn and soybean fields
can result in the loss of up to 60 percent of applied fer-
tilizer nitrogen (Randall et al. 1997; Randall and Goss
2001). An abundant supply of nitrogen is critical for
optimum yields, but unless it is immediately taken up
by plant roots, it is easily dissolved in rainwater and
moved into streams and groundwater. For logistical
reasons farmers often apply nitrogen in the fall, long
before the roots of crop plants can find and immobi-
lize it. This leaves large quantities of inorganic nitrogen
vulnerable to leaching for several months every year.
Nitrogen leaching is exacerbated by subsurface (tile)
drainage (Figure 2). Dinnes et al. (2002), reviewing the
extensive soil science and agronomy research on meth-
ods to reduce nitrogen leaching in the Corn Belt, con-
cluded that nitrogen leaching is an “inherent property”
of corn-soybean systems on tile-drained lands. In the
best of circumstances, farmer efforts to control nitro-
gen losses can reduce leaching by at most 10–20 per-
cent unless they take land out of corn and soybeans and
instead plant more cover crops, hay, pasture, and pe-
rennial crops (Dinnes et al. 2002; Karlen et al. 2006).
Iowa lakes and streams have measured among the
highest nutrient levels in the world (Beeman 2006) and
levels of nitrate N in streams are two to three times the
levels found in the 1940s (Iowa Geological Survey Bu-
reau 2001). The herbicide atrazine can be detected in
28 Landscape Journal 27:1–08
all surface streams and lakes at any time of the year and
is found in the rain during spring and summer (Na-
tions and Hallberg 1992). Phosphorus-laden sediment
in natural lakes and impoundments, delivered by de-
cades of soil erosion, now causes annual summer algal
blooms, low oxygen, and fish kills (Downing et al. 2002).
These late summer algal blooms and associated winter
fish kills are considered “normal” by many citizens (per-
sonal observations).
Up until the 1980s, these problems were thought
to be mostly regional. Then researchers in the Gulf of
Mexico began to realize that in the summertime there
was a large zone of low oxygen (“hypoxic”) waters that
killed or drove off most ocean life in an area the size of
Maryland (Turner and Rabelais 2003). It was caused by
excess nitrogen, which fertilized the ocean causing algal
blooms whose bacterial decomposition robbed the wa-
ter of oxygen. Goolsby et al. (2001) estimate that streams
draining the states of Iowa and Illinois contribute 35
percent of all the nitrogen entering the Gulf of Mexico.
It has become clear that this is a global phenomenon
wherever industrial agricultural practices emerge (Mil-
lennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005).
Social and Economic Consequences
There is strong evidence that the rural economy has
suffered under this arrangement. The steady decline
in numbers of farms (US-NASS 2006) has been ac-
companied by a decline in overall rural population and
social support systems (Albrecht 1998) even though
the amount of land in crop production has remained
steady. Visually, this change is evident in the decaying
barns and abandoned homesteads which still dot the
landscape. The barns were once important for stor-
ing hay and sheltering livestock over the winter. Once
pastured livestock are gone, this infrastructure is no
longer necessary and thus has been allowed to deteri-
orate along with fences and other remnants of the old
system. Rural decline is equally evident in areas where
high concentrations of hogs are raised in confinement
(Donham et al. 2006). Impacts include property devalu-
ation, health problems among workers and neighbors,

and community discord. Small town commerce is of-
ten paired down to just three businesses: the grain el-
evator / farm chemical store, the convenience store / gas
station, and the bar (personal observations).
Economically, the current design is not even mak-
ing money for the region. Meter (2005) has calculated
farm-related income and expenses for a nine-county
area of northeastern Iowa between 1999 and 2003. On
Figure 5. Rainstorm on cornfield in late
May 2004. Note the small size of the
corn plants at this time of year and the
sediment movement off the gradually
sloping field. (Photograph courtesy of
Amy Carolan)
Figure 6. Infrared orthophoto from
aerial photos taken May 14, 2002 (Iowa
Geographic Map Server 2006). This is
a typical upland drainage with altered
surface hydrology. Streams have been
channelized and in some cases there
is a strip of grass next to the waterway.
It is likely that most or all of area is
underlain by tile drainage. In the lower
right hand corner, the grey lines indicate
recently buried drainage tile.
average, the region’s farmers produce $1.08 billion of
food per year, but spent $1.14 billion to raise it. Over the
five-year period of the study, production costs exceeded
farm receipts by $308 million. Over 30 percent of the
farms lost money in 2002. This region survived only be-
cause of an average of $173 million in federal subsidies
and $72 million in off-farm income each year. The fig-
ures are similar in other parts of Iowa and in Minnesota
Jackson 29
 Figure 7. Modifications to the Missouri River southwest of Salix in Woodbury County, Iowa. Left, aerial photo taken between 1937 and
1939. Right, 2006 orthophoto (Iowa Geographic Map Server 2006). Channelization and straightening led to a loss of riparian wildlife
habitat including ephemeral islands and sandbars needed for nesting of the Interior Least Tern and the Piping Plover, two birds on the
endangered species list.

(Meter 2005). Nationwide, the Corn Belt stands out in
its dependence on government payments. For instance,
in 2001, government payments made up 45 percent or
more of gross farm income in Iowa, the largest percent-
age in the United States (Morehart 2003). Annually the
cost of government payments to farmers nationwide
hovers around $18 to $20 billion.
Costs to mitigate the environmental or “external”
costs of agriculture (i.e. those not recognized in market
transactions) are estimated at $5 to $16 billion per year
(Tegtmeier and Duffy 2004). These include the costs of
dredging ditches and lakes filled with sediments, man-
aging health problems and disease outbreaks, regulat-
ing pesticides, and compensating for losses to wildlife
and ecosystem processes. This does not include the
costs of running natural resource agencies such as
the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service (an-
other $3.7 billion). Foreseeable future costs include
coping with antibiotic-resistant pathogens bred in
confinement-raised livestock and full implementation
of the Clean Water Act (Tegtmeier and Duffy 2004).
At the other end of the food chain, it is clear that
the abundance of food produced by this system has not
led to increased human health or even freedom from
hunger—in fact it may be helping to create the obesity
problem (Schoonover and Muller 2006). According to
the Centers for Disease Control (2004), 66.5 percent of
adult Americans are overweight or obese as well as 17
percent of adolescents and 19 percent of children ages
six to eleven. On the other end of the spectrum, 34 mil-
lion Americans are either hungry or experience food
insecurity. The long-cherished belief that our bounty is

30 Landscape Journal 27:1–08

helping to feed the hungry around the world does not
hold up to scrutiny either. An analysis by the Institute
for Agriculture and Trade Policy revealed that less than
1.5 percent of total corn exports go to the 49 nations
that have moderately high to the highest percentages
of undernourished populations. In reality, corn and
soybeans feed livestock to produce meat for the US
and other wealthy, industrialized countries (Muller and
Levins 1999). Recent books by Eric Schlosser (Fast Food
Nation, 2001), Marion Nestle (Food Politics, 2004), and
Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 2006) and
a clever web animation “The Meatrix” (GRACE 2006),
have brought the myriad issues of the conventional
food system into mainstream discussion and likely
spurred the rising demand for organically-grown and
locally-raised food.
REDESIGNING AGRICULTURE: FARMERS, THE
FARM BILL, AND THE MARKET
The social, economic, and environmental conse-
quences of this agricultural design have stimulated sev-
eral authors to “redesign agriculture” (Boody and De-
vore 2006) using alternative scenario analysis. Using a
variety of modeling approaches, agronomists (Burkhart
et al. 2006), conservation biologists (Jackson 2002), and
multidisciplinary teams (Boody et al. 2005; Santelmann
et al. 2004) have determined that a greater proportion
of perennials on the landscape, greater diversity of
crops, and a move towards reintegration of crops and
livestock on working farms would measurably improve
water quality, biodiversity, and the prosperity of ru-
ral communities. In the absence of farm payments for
commodity production, these systems were also more
profitable. Furthermore, landscape architects (San-
telmann et al. 2004; Nassauer et al. 2002) found that
farmers actually preferred the landscape scenarios that
emphasized biodiversity and water quality over com-
modity production.
Despite widespread agreement over what the re-
design should look like and the efforts of numerous
foundations and nonprofit organizations such as the
Green Lands Blue Waters Consortium (2007), the Leo-
pold Center for Sustainable Agriculture (2007), the Kel-
logg Foundation (2007), and Land Stewardship Project
(2007), no large-scale change in land use from row
crops to perennials or from specialized to integrated
crop / livestock systems appears to be taking hold.
Much attention has been paid to the role of farmers and
federal farm policy in creating meaningful landscape
change (for example, Jackson and Jackson 2002; Boody
and DeVore 2006; Pollan 2006). However, global cor-
porations command ever-greater market power in the
food system (Murphy 2006; Hendrickson and Heffernan
2005). Such corporations—frequently treated as a face-
less entity called “the market” or “the economy” and
dismissed as a given—are a third major force in agricul-
tural landscape design, and consumers and voters can
have an impact on their behavior. It is the thesis of this
paper that when it comes to addressing conservation
in the Corn Belt, farmers and farm policy have received
greater attention, and the structure of the food system
less attention than is generally deserved.
The Farmer as Designer
In his 1939 essay, “The Farmer as Conservationist,” Aldo
Leopold wrote that “the landscape of any farm is the
farmer’s portrait of himself” (1991, 263). In Leopold’s
view, the farmer bears enormous responsibility for the
beauty and wildness of the landscape, as well as its abil-
ity to produce food or timber. A decade later, in “The
Land Ethic,” Leopold takes issue with the government
conservation model, complaining that “Despite nearly
a century of propaganda, conservation still proceeds
at a snail’s pace; progress still consists largely of letter-
head pieties and convention oratory. On the back forty
we still slip two steps backward for each forward stride”
(1966, 243). Farmers are only asked to practice what
conservation is profitable, and the government is ex-
pected to do the rest. “Is not this formula too easy to
accomplish anything worth-while? It defines no right
or wrong, assigns no obligation, calls for no sacrifice,
Jackson 31
implies no change in the current philosophy of values.
In respect of land-use, it urges only enlightened self-
interest” (Leopold 1966, 244).
Another problem, as Leopold saw it, was that so-
ciety could not afford all of the costs of conservation.
As an alternative to the “alphabet soup” of government
conservation programs, Leopold argues for a new land
ethic, extending our social instincts from the human
community to the “land community.” He believed this
transformation would be driven by more sophisticated
appreciation for ecological processes.
If the farmer is indeed the portrait artist of the agri-
cultural landscape, then most solutions to the ecologi-
cal and social problems described above indeed would
seem to reside with individual decisions at the farm
level, guided by the best scientific research. In fact, Leo-
pold’s ideas inspired the Iowa State Legislature, in 1988,
to establish the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agricul-
ture by taxing fertilizer and pesticide sales. The great-
est share of the Center’s funds goes to farmer-oriented
research and education (LCSA 2007). The USDA’s Sus-
tainable Agriculture Research and Education funding
program takes a similar approach.
The idea of farmers imbued with a land ethic still
remains attractive to conservationists. In the study by
Santelmann et al. (2004), farmers preferred the land-
scape scenarios focused on biodiversity and water
quality over the production scenario. Why, then, does
preference not turn into reality? While farmers today
may wish to create a less polluted, more ecologically
healthy landscape, there are larger, stronger, and more
pervasive forces that limit their options: the intrinsic
ecological flaws of a corn-soy monocropping, federal
farm policy, and the structure of the food system itself.
First, it is important to note that substantial change
will not come from applying best management prac-
tices to corn and soybeans, but only from decreasing
the amount of land dedicated to corn and soybeans.
Corn-soybean systems are inherently leaky (Dinnes et al.
2002) and farmers are unable to overcome this eco-
logical reality even when they take advantage of every
32 Landscape Journal 27:1–08
available farm conservation program. Only modest
improvements in environmental performance (par-
ticularly nitrate leaching) are possible by fine-tuning
corn and soybean production systems (Dinnes et al.
2002; Randall et al. 2001). Experiments coupled with
landscape-scale modeling studies simulating alterna-
tive land use practices showed that the greatest gains in
protecting soil and water quality came from extended
crop rotations with at least three out of five years in pe-
rennial grasses and legumes. Yet these methods were
not competitive within the environment of high sub-
sidies for row crops (Boody et al. 1995; Burkhart et al.
2006; Karlen et al. 2006). In other words, the solution for
reducing nitrate pollution is well-known, but the cur-
rent economic structure of our food system will not per-
mit farmers to use it.
Grain farmers do not change their practices be-
cause alternatives to the corn / beans / concentrated live-
stock system are risky. Flax, oats, sunflowers, sorghum,
amaranth, and other crops grow well in the Midwest,
and would contribute positively to more sustainable
crop rotations, but communities often lack suitable in-
frastructure for transporting, storing, processing, and
marketing them. For corn and soybeans, however, this
“supply chain” is well established.
Even the largest farmers depend on access to credit
for land, equipment, and operating expenses, and this
credit can be jeopardized by growing alternative crops.
Under the protective arm of federal commodity subsi-
dies, land prices have risen and as a consequence, so
have land rental rates (Duffy and Holste 2005). Market
prices for land are related to the proportion of the land
that is eligible for subsidies, and this has been tied his-
torically to the amount of land planted to corn each
year. Raising alternative crops could reduce the amount
of land eligible for corn subsidies and thus reduce the
land’s market value. Since land is the collateral for many
farm loans, banks may simply refuse to provide credit
for alternative crops.
Farmers are further constrained by large capital
investments such as specialized livestock buildings. Let
us suppose that a hog farmer has invested several hun-
dred thousand dollars in a specialized hog production
facility (the loan guaranteed by a 5-year contract with a
large hog processor) and then decides he would rather
raise and market hogs using a Humane Society certifi-
cation. The hogs will need access to fresh air and sun-
shine, deep bedding as opposed to slat floors, and more
room to move around and socialize. The design of his
current building is inflexible, so new facilities will have
to be built while his new building sits empty. Banks are
unlikely to make that new loan (Tom Frantzen, personal
communication).
Business models for mid- and large-scale farms of-
ten include multiple family members or other partners.
A major change in farm operations proposed by one
member of the organization may be vetoed by the rest.
The implications are counterintuitive: large-scale farm-
ers managing thousands of acres are perhaps least able
to make changes. First, these farmers are aging. The per-
centage of Iowa farmers over 65 years old has increased
from around 10 percent in the 1970s to nearly one-
quarter of all farmers in 2002 (US NASS 2006). Few other
highly-skilled professionals with a lifetime of experience
would consider major changes at that point in their
career. Another factor is the so-called rural brain drain
(Artz 2003) in which young, college-educated people
move away from rural areas to metro areas where their
education allows them to make more money. There is a
dearth of young, innovative risk takers willing to settle in
rural areas and try out new models of farm business.
It is tempting to point to the large and growing
number of farmers who are organically certified or
developing new markets for gourmet, local, heirloom,
humanely-raised, or similar specialized labels (e.g.,
Jackson and Jackson 2002; Imhoff 2003; Imhoff 2006).
They have been successful in avoiding or leaving the
structures of conventional agriculture and their ex-
amples should be celebrated and studied. However,
they tend to be exceptional individuals in oftentimes
exceptional circumstances, and it is a mistake to base
farm and food policy on the exceptional rather than the
typical. Their potential to have a measurable impact
on the health of the Corn Belt landscape is question-
able. Local food initiatives such as the Buy Fresh, Buy
Local campaign (Foodroutes 2007) have direct, positive
economic impacts for farms and local communities
(LCSA 2007), but the entire population of Iowa could
be fed with less than 4 percent of its cropland (M. Wag-
ner, unpublished data). The 2002 US Agricultural Cen-
sus reported that less than 600,000 acres, or 0.1 percent
of total cropland, produced organically-certified food
(US NASS 2006). In Leopold’s day, farmers may have
been the primary “portrait artist” designing the land-
scape, but due to economic and policy forces much
larger than the individual farm, this may no longer be
the case.
Federal Farm Policy as Designer
For almost three decades, critics of mainstream agri-
culture have pointed to the federal Farm Bill as a major
force encouraging monocultures of annual row crops
and preventing meaningful land-use change (Imhoff
2007; Boody and Devore 2006; National Research Coun-
cil 1989; Strange 1988; Berry 1977). This critique stands
in sharp contrast with the general population of taxpay-
ers and eaters—primarily metropolitan—who are usu-
ally unaware of the influence of the federal farm policy
on the agricultural landscape (Imhoff 2007).
The Farm Bill consists of a suite of provisions
designed to stimulate demand for commodities, for
example, subsidizing international exports, funneling
excess grain and dairy production into the Food Stamp
program and school lunches, subsidizing barge trans-
port, etc. Other provisions provide financial stability to
farmers by creating a complex array of payments and
price supports for the major commodities (corn, wheat,
cotton, peanuts, sugar). In the Midwest, these policies
privilege annual grains over more environmentally
friendly perennial pasture, hay, and alternative crops.
Originally payments to farmers were tied to pro-
duction limits and conservation practices. They were
crafted to provide a safety net for the natural rise and
Jackson 33
fall of prices (Ray 2004). However, since 1996, because
there have been no restrictions on the amount of land
that could be planted to these crops, production is con-
sistently high, prices low, and the government must
make up part of the difference between the market
price and a target price. Inexpensive feed grains subsi-
dized by the federal government have in turn helped to
fuel the growth of confined animal feeding operations
and ethanol production (for example Imhoff 2007, Ray
2004, Boody 2002) and conservation compliance re-
quirements have been relaxed or dropped.
Supporters of mainstream agriculture and current
agricultural policy can point to its numerous conser-
vation provisions as evidence that the Farm Bill is “the
greenest ever” (Farm Bureau Federation 2006), yet en-
vironmental problems in agriculture persist. The major
conservation programs can be broken into two catego-
ries: those that protect land by taking it out of produc-
tion completely (Conservation Reserve Program, Wet-
lands Reserve Program, Grasslands Reserve Program,
Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program), or provide cost-
share dollars for Best Management Practices (BMPs) in
crop and livestock production (Environmental Quality
Incentives Program, Agricultural Management Assis-
tance Program). According to Boody (2002),
BMPs are practices or handfuls of practices designed
for the most part to solve an isolated environmental
problem, such as nutrient runoff, within the context
of a dominant row crop or animal feedlot system. In-
stead of considering whether there are viable alterna-
tives to raising corn or soybeans on a highly erosive
piece of land, BMPs are typically used to provide a
way to make conventionally farming systems more
environmentally palatable. (265)
Meanwhile, the Conservation Security Program, de-
signed to reward farmers for multiple benefits to agri-
culture including soil, water, and wildlife conservation,
has been significantly under-funded and applied to
only a tiny fraction of the lands that could benefit from
it (Imhoff 2007).
34 Landscape Journal 27:1–08
The Market as Designer
Despite the great importance of the Farm Bill in shaping
broad-scale land-use patterns across the United States,
it would be a mistake to conclude the analysis there. By
all accounts, the policy is heavily influenced by some-
thing much larger—the corporations and commodity
groups which together comprise the food and fiber sys-
tem. In 2001–2002, a bi-partisan survey consisting of in-
depth interviews with 26 members of Congress asked
how federal legislators saw rural America and farm
policy (Kellogg Foundation 2003). Legislators expressed
concern about the loss of the family farm and declining
vitality of rural communities. They also described the
need to keep food prices low and protect farmers from
bankruptcy. However, senators and congressmen from
both political parties expressed the frustration that
the policymaking process was dominated by the larg-
est special interest groups. One congressman said “the
subsidies really have nothing to do with farmers, it’s all
about taking care of corporate interests” (Kellogg Foun-
dation 2003, 8).
The sheer size and market power of agribusiness
organizations makes it possible to significantly influ-
ence public policy (Murphy 2006). According to the
Center for Responsive Politics (2007), between 2002 and
2006 agribusiness corporations and trade associations
spent $80 million to $100 million per year on lobbying
($819 million since 1998, with 2891 registered lobby-
ists in Washington, DC), and another $44–$54 million
in campaign contributions. The long and diverse list
of spenders included Cargill, ConAgra, Archer Dan-
iels Midland, the Farm Bureau Federation, Monsanto,
and Tyson Foods. Nearly 300 political action commit-
tees made contributions on behalf of agribusiness and
a “revolving door” between agribusiness and federal
government agencies ensures that the interests of agri-
business will be well represented (Murphy 2006).
Market power can overwhelm conservation con-
cerns of even the most conscientious farmers, a fact that
was perhaps less true in Aldo Leopold’s time. Like most
producers of raw materials, farmers are price-takers be-
cause they have no control over the global demand for
the product they sell and are sufficiently specialized and
indebted that they must grow only those crops. Only
competition among multiple buyers of their crops pro-
tects them from the power differential between seller
and buyer. Murphy (2006) describes various dimen-
sions of market power, including market concentration,
vertical integration, contract farming, the establish-
ment of production standards, and the control of mar-
ket information. The story of hog production provides
an instructive example.
In the winter of 1997–1998, hog prices dropped to
six cents per pound, about 12 percent of the actual cost
of production. Many hog farmers saw not only the end
of an era, but the handwriting on the wall. The hand-
writing said, “You may be a very efficient and clever
farmer, but you are not in charge.” This watershed
event was brought on by the industrialization of the
pork industry, when most packing plants began con-
tracting with factory-scale producers, creating what is
known as “captive supplies” for their processing plants.
Mid-sized farmers who couldn’t deliver an entire semi-
tractor-trailer load of hogs every week were offered
lower prices for their livestock than the big produc-
ers, regardless of quality or efficiency. This essentially
eliminated the open market for independent farmers
of all sizes. By the end of that winter, only two groups
of hog producers were left: those who had expanded to
factory scale and forfeited their independence by con-
tracting with large corporations, and those who mar-
keted to the gourmet restaurants in San Francisco, with
humanely-raised, hormone-free pork. Nationwide, in
the 1990s, the United States lost 70 percent of its hog
farms and 37 percent of its dairies (Keeney and Kemp
2003). Iowa went from 35,000 to fewer than 10,000 hog
producers in just 5 years (US NASS 2006).
All agricultural markets have changed. A measure
of market concentration is the CR4, or Concentration
Ratio—the percentage of the market controlled by the
top four firms. When four or fewer firms control at least
40 percent of an industry’s market, that sector begins
to lose its competitiveness and begin to function like
a monopoly. United States farmers face concentrated
markets in farm inputs (seeds, chemicals), basic pro-
cessing (corn and soy processing, livestock slaughter),
and increasingly, in secondary processing and food
retailing. For the “protein sector” (animal slaughter
and primary processing), the top four firms control 49
percent to 83 percent of the market (Hendrickson and
Heffernan 2005, Table 1). Major companies in this sec-
tor include Tyson, Cargill, Swift and Co., Premium Stan-
dard Farms, and Smithfield Foods. The handling and
processing of grain crops to feed the livestock are like-
wise concentrated. In 2002, the top four companies in
terminal grain-handling facilities, corn and soy export,
flour milling, and soybean crushing, controled 60 to 80
percent of their respective sectors (Hendrickson and
Heffernan 2005). Major companies in these areas were
Cargill, Cenex Harvest States, ADM, Con Agra, Bunge,
and General Mills. Seed companies, fertilizer and pes-
ticide suppliers, and farm equipment manufacturers
have all concentrated to a few large firms.
The food companies buying raw materials from
farmers are not operating independently of one an-
other. Heffernan (1999) described the emergence of
integrated food chain clusters that dominate food and
agriculture not only through mergers and acquisitions,
but also through “joint ventures, partnerships, con-
tracts, . . . agreements and side agreements.” Mean-
while, food retailing is increasingly dominated by five
firms globally. In 2005, the top five food retailers com-
manded 42 percent of the market (Kroger, Albert-
sons, Wal-Mart, Safeway, and Ahold USA) (Hendrickson
and Heffernan 2005). Due to their overwhelming retail
power, these firms are increasingly able to dictate pro-
duction practices and specify genetics back through
the supply chain to the processor and farmer (Murphy
2006).
According to Hendrickson and James (2005), farm-
ers’ knowledge, skills, and genetic diversity are lost as
they specialize to fewer and fewer crops dictated by
the market. As farmers’ options become constrained by
Jackson 35
the demands of the powerful supply chain, it becomes
more difficult to make ethical land decisions. Reluc-
tantly, those interested in farming more sustainably
have begun to see themselves as captives of a global
supply chain, forced to buy from a handful of suppliers
and sell to a handful of processors. To regain control,
they are forced to leave the mainstream commodity
markets with their reassuring government payment
schemes and well-worn paths to market. Similarly,
sustainable agriculture organizations such as the Leo-
pold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and The Land
Stewardship Project have begun investigating the cre-
ation of ecolabels, local markets, and specialized value
chains—clusters of growers-processors-distributors
-retailers. (Value Chain Partnerships for Sustainable
Agriculture 2007). Sustainable production systems are
now seen as inseparable from alternative markets in
which customers pay for the true value of sustainably
produced food.
DESIGNING THE AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPE:
THE ROLE OF THE METROPOLITAN CONSUMER
A growing number of consumers have become aware of
the impact of their eating habits on family farms, ani-
mal welfare, worker safety, and environmental health.
The first reaction has been to begin buying food that
is produced outside of the global supply chain. There
are a variety of techniques for doing this, for instance
shopping at farmers’ markets, purchasing a “farm
share” to receive a weekly delivery of farm produce
in season, or ordering a quarter of a steer from a local
farmer and having it processed at a meat locker. Pur-
chasing grass-fed beef or poultry essentially pays for
grassland and discourages row crop agriculture (Pollan
2006). Imhoff (2007) recommends that citizens work
together to bring healthier, local food to their school’s
lunch menu, hospitals and nursing homes, and food
banks, to make healthy food available to those who
most need it.
Although satisfying to the individual consumer,
and a source of economic development for the local or
36 Landscape Journal 27:1–08
regional farming sector, such a consumer boycott will
not make a major impact on the agricultural landscape
without also engaging in policy redesign. Metropolitan
consumers can support agricultural policy that holds
agribusiness more accountable for environmental and
conservation outcomes. Because the handful of trans-
national corporations that control seed, chemical, grain
and protein sectors cannot be expected to behave more
ethically than their competitors or than required by law,
it would be unreasonable to expect these entities to act
voluntarily with regard to long-term sustainability of
the protein production landscape. Regulations long re-
sisted by industry may be required.
Another approach is to “shame” agribusiness cor-
porations into embracing the same land ethic expected
of an individual farmer-landowner. This approach has
been attempted in the arena of human rights for gar-
ment workers working for independent contractors.
While nominally independent, these contractors are
market captives of the large corporations who market
apparel globally, such as Nike and Gap.
These proposals will be met with the objection that
the “small farmer” will be hurt. Urban consumers with
little direct connection to farm politics are vulnerable to
substantial media manipulation. Media images of agri-
culture generated by industry emphasize the agrarian
hero rather than the industrial behemoth. Examples are
Americas Heartland (2006), supported by Monsanto,
and BestFoodNation (2006), supported by food indus-
try organizations such as the Corn Refiners Association,
American Meat Institute, National Council of Chain
Restaurants, the Snack Food Association, and United
Egg producers. Their message:
Our nation’s agriculture is a truly miraculous enter-
prise, a place where only 2 percent of the population
feeds, clothes, and fuels the other 98 percent, along
with millions more worldwide. Farmers and ranchers
of all stripes contribute mightily to our quality of life,
and as a result, American consumers spend less to
feed themselves than any other country in the world.
(Americas Heartland 2006)
 Especially in light of recent widespread food
safety issues, consumers should be able to see through
this transparent public relations ploy. Consumers can
demand accountability from the corporations most
responsible for “design” of the agricultural landscape,
and they can advocate for food and agricultural policy
that is directed toward better ecosystem health, public
health, and health of rural communities.
CONCLUSION
Farm policy and public opinion should also be influ-
enced by landscape architects asking, “how could this
landscape be designed better to benefit its inhabitants
and the larger community?” There is a clear design to
this landscape, not an accidental pattern, and it is a de-
sign that performs very poorly for people in both rural
and metropolitan areas. The aesthetic perspective of
the landscape architect is also the local perspective, the
perspective that place matters, and this is precisely the
perspective that is denied by the global market. Land-
scape architects are in a unique position to draw atten-
tion to the relationship between agency and aesthetic
of rural landscapes, something many rural residents
have been forced to sacrifice to economic reality.
Like cheap fossil energy, dependency on the in-
dustrial food system has shaped both metropolitan
life and regional landscape. The myth of the farmer as
designer, so vigorously promoted by industrial agricul-
ture to non-farming members of society, ensures that
those with the most powerful influence on the agricul-
tural landscape—urban consumers—remain ignorant
of the aesthetic, ecological, and social consequences of
their own appetites. The protein production landscape
of the American Midwest will not become more aes-
thetically pleasing, ecologically healthy, or economi-
cally vibrant until these consequences become more
widely appreciated.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Alex Oberle for invaluable assistance with the
aerial photography.
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AUTHOR LAURA JACKSON earned a BA in Biology from Grin-
nell College and a PhD from Cornell University in Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology. From 1990-1993 she was Research Ecolo-
gist at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona, studying
the ecological history and restoration of abandoned desert farm-
land. Since 1993, she has been on the faculty of the University
of Northern Iowa, where she is currently Professor of Biology.
She coordinates the Professional Science Masters program in
Ecosystem Management, and serves on the advisory board of
the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Laura and her
mother Dana Jackson are co-editors of The Farm as Natural Habi-
tat: Reconnecting Food Systems with Ecosystems (2002, Island
Press).