What would it look like? Visualizing a future US Corn Belt landscape with more table food production

Urban Farm DB summary

In the US Corn Belt near Des Moines, Iowa, researchers combined land-use visualization with producer surveys to examine a future scenario supplying 50% of a metropolitan population's dietary needs from local "table food" (fruit, vegetable and grain crops for direct human consumption) by 2050. Surveys were sent to 1,360 row crop and 55 specialty crop producers, yielding 316 and 25 eligible responses respectively. The scenario would require less than 3% of available agricultural land and roughly 130 additional producers, mostly in grain production. Based on producers' stated plans, local production could supply about 25% of residents' fruit, vegetable and grain needs, up from a 2% baseline. Row crop producers ranked food safety regulations as their strongest constraint, specialty producers ranked labor availability, and both groups cited crop insurance and processing facilities as important.