Midwest agriculture is dominated by annual row crops such as corn and soybeans.  These crops are highly productive, but have a number of negative environmental impacts including soil erosion, loss of soil carbon, nitrate leaching, greenhouse gas production, etc. These crops receive abundant inputs of fertilizers, pesticides, and energy while producing little in terms of ecosystem services. As an alternative, this team established a long-term trial termed “Agroforestry for Food’. This system uses multiple, perennial crops to produce food with environmental benefits and improved ecosystem services compared to annual cropping systems.  This nearly 12-hectare experimental plot will produce significant amount of food while providing critical insights into the development of stable, productive cropping systems.  The field site was initially planted in 2015 and is entering its fifth growing season.

This team has not efficiently irrigated this trial to date, which has significantly slowed the development of the plants due to a lack of timely irrigation. This teams goal is to install irrigation to improve crop growth and development, produce earlier and more robust harvests, mimic what a typical grower would do, and speed the development of the trial, which will improve understanding of how these different species interact and produce.