The American Midwest Will Feed a Warming World. But for How Long?
Rising temperatures will endanger the U.S. corn belt, a key source of calories for the growing global population
By Adam Piore
It’s a bitter cold March morning in Ames, Iowa, and the sprawling cornfields outside of town are buried beneath a couple of inches of ice and snow. But it’s hot and humid inside the custom-built grow chambers on the campus of Iowa State University.
Blindingly bright lights beat down on a trio of squares, each containing close to 7,000 pounds (3,175 kilograms) of soil, sunk five feet (1.5 meters) into the floor. The steady churning of fans, ensuring air circulation and uniform temperatures throughout the room, echoes off the walls. Every few inches, a suite of infrared thermometers and moisture sensors track the microclimates surrounding the leaves of the plants.
Inside these growth chambers, it’s the future. And Jerry Hatfield, an affable agronomist who heads the US Department of Agriculture’s National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment, doesn’t like what he sees.
“Either we’re going to change the crops that we produce or we’re going to have to think about how we…
