Corn production in the U.S. Corn Belt has become more robust and spatially equitable over the past five decades. These changes have been driven in part by land-use conversions from small grains to corn and soybean in places one considered marginal for those crops. Corn production in the U.S. has become more robust in part because of acreage changes but also because of significant increases in the yield trend over the past few decades. Production of corn has also become spatially equitable because the current yield trends are strongest in places where production of corn has historically been lower.

Reviewed by: Chemical Lands: Pesticides, Aerial Spraying, and Health in North America's Grasslands since 1945 by David D. Vail Christopher R. Laingen Chemical Lands: Pesticides, Aerial Spraying, and Health in North America's Grasslands since 1945. By David D. Vail. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2018. ix + 180 pp. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95 cloth. I applaud David Vail and the University of Alabama Press for having written and published a book that dared to do anything other than demonize farming—in general—and the use of agricultural chemicals—specifically—and pretend that our country's agricultural production systems could have been created and continue to function without them. Vail's book is truly a breath of fresh air insofar as that many social scientists, social science programs, and academic presses preach increasingly partisan worldviews about large-scale conventional agricultural practices. Farmers are, by and large, keen stewards of the land. Their livelihoods largely depend upon the health of the ecosystems within which they operate. In his book, Vail expertly explains how practices employed by "Ag pilots" evolved over many decades as they carefully considered their target landscape(s), non-target crops, and the people, animals, and surrounding environments affected by their work; they worked diligently, more often than not, alongside their clients and other stakeholders to minimize risks to these local and regional ecosystems. While many farmers were initially reluctant to adopt aerial application methods, over time, collaboration and "precision became the answer" (7). In 1950 the convergence of federal officials, agriculturalists, aeronautical engineers, and pilots to design and build the Ag-1 "flying tractor" marked the arrival of the "first plane ever designated and built exclusively for super safe and efficient crop control flying" (88). "By considering the target landscape, non-target crops, people, and animals, and the larger environment together, Ag pilots minimized risks to local ecosystems while also keeping crops safe" (128). By the 1960s a patchwork of state regulations, a growing emphasis on federal oversight of chemicals, and the release of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring placed Ag pilots, landowners, and weed scientists—overwhelmingly, people who were doing their dead-level best to reduce harm to the environment—on the side of what was viewed by the general public as an environmentally destructive industry. Are there shortcomings to these practices? Absolutely. Are there alternatives? For sure, and in certain locales—largely outside the Great Plains and Midwest— nonindustrialized and nonconventional agricultural production and pest-control practices might even prove to be more logical and optimal solutions. Vail's book, however, curbs any notion that America's food production system could have been created or sustained without the help of industrialization and nonorganic—sometimes dangerous—chemicals. Efforts that began in the mid-twentieth century aimed at improving precision in agricultural chemical application were the building blocks upon which farmers' labors continue today (e.g., Global Positioning System [GPS] technology and precision agriculture). Such efforts, many of which originated on the American Great Plains, have helped consumers get what they want out of agricultural production: to keep the cost of agricultural products as low as possible, so that we do not spend a penny more of our disposable income than necessary on the food, fuel, and fiber that our country's farmers produce. The proliferation of aerial spraying was driven not by American farmers or by "Big Ag," but by the growing demands of American consumers. All of us. Dr. Vail and the University of Alabama Press: this was a job well done! [End Page 87] Christopher R. Laingen Department of Geology and Geography Eastern Illinois University Copyright © 2020 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Reviewed by: Shaping the North Star State: A History of Minnesota’s Boundaries by William E. Lass Christopher R. Laingen William E. Lass, Shaping the North Star State: A History of Minnesota’s Boundaries. St. Cloud, MN: North Star Press, 2014. 230 pp. $16.95. Shaping the North Star State is a detailed account of myriad events, people, and decisions that helped create the boundaries of Minnesota between 1783 and 1858. William Lass taught history at the Minnesota State University, Mankato for forty-two years, beginning in 1960, and twelve years after his retirement in 2002, he is still going strong. Having never had a course in Minnesota history when he began teaching a course about Minnesota history, Lass soon found that he needed to forego the use of “secondary accounts, such as those published in general histories,” as those “were incomplete and sometimes erroneous” (viii). This realization led to Lass immersing himself into the historical and political archives of Minnesota and its neighboring states—tireless and thankless work that helped sustain a career of first-class, original scholarship. To a non-Minnesotan, the state’s natural borders seem to make more [End Page 110] sense than the others: the Mississippi River and St. Croix River that make up portions of the eastern border with Wisconsin; the western border of the Red River with North Dakota; and the Rainy River (and its numerous lakes) and Pigeon River border to the north with Canada. Then there are the more nonsensical straight-line borders: the area between the St. Croix and Lake Superior on the eastern border; the Northwest Angle and north-western border with Canada; the western border with South Dakota south of Big Stone Lake; and the entire southern border with Iowa. As it turns out, the back-stories, both for Minnesota’s natural borders and those that seem today to have been arbitrarily-chosen lines of latitude or longitude, are equally intriguing and complex. Lass deftly maneuvers readers in a north-south-east-west fashion around the state, describing in high-resolution and page-turning prose how, indeed, The Gopher State got its shape. The book’s first chapter, “Establishing the Northern Boundary,” was taken largely from Lass’s 1980 book Minnesota’s Boundary with Canada: Its Evolution since 1783, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. Here, Lass chronicles the three treaties entered into by the United States and Great Britain in 1793, 1842, and 1818 which codified the state’s northern border. Chapter 2 explores Minnesota’s southern boundary with Iowa. While obviously being valuable to this book, this chapter alone should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of Iowa’s borders. Lass describes, in high-resolution, both the territorial debates as part of the territory’s constitutional conventions as well as those taking place in Congress in Washington, DC. Minnesota’s eastern boundary with Wisconsin is the topic of the book’s third chapter. Again, Lass draws upon work he had done previously—this time from a paper he authored in a 1987 issue of Minnesota History. The western boundary of Minnesota was the last to be fixed when the state was admitted to the union in May of 1858. The book’s fifth chapter revisits the state’s northern boundary and discussed its “marking”—something not done until 1908 because no one throughout most of the previous century had any real concern about where it was due to the lack of any sort of private ownership activities that would necessitate knowing where the Minnesota border ended and Canada began. The book concludes with a brief, final chapter on “Boundary Adjustments and Maintenance”, not the least of which being the relatively new border between Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan on Lake Superior. Endnotes for the book’s six chapters are plentiful, with counts of seventy, sixty-eight, sixty, one hundred, fifty-eight, and thirty-four notes respectively; [End Page 111] the book concludes with ten pages of bibliographic entries for archival sources, government documents, newspapers, journal articles, and books, followed by a robust index comprised mostly of place names (towns and water bodies) and the names of people responsible for the boundary-related accounts...

Grassland to cropland conversion in the northern prairie of the United States has been a topic of recent land use change studies. Within this.' region more corn and soybeans are grown now (2017) than in the past but most studies to date have not examined multi-decadal trends and the synergistic web of socio-ecological driving forces involved, opting instead for short-term analyses and easily targeted agents of change This paper examines the coalescing of biophysical and socioeconomic driving forces that have brought change to the agricultural landscape of this region between 1980 and 2013. While land conversion has occurred, most of the region's cropland in 2013 had been previously cropped by the early 1980s. Furthermore, the agricultural conditions in which crops were grown during those three decades have changed considerably because of non-biophysical alterations to production practices and changing agricultural markets. Findings revealed that human drivers played more of a role in crop change than biophysical changes, that blending quantitative and qualitative methods to tell a more complete story of crop change in this region was difficult because of the synergistic characteristics of the drivers involved, and that more research is needed to understand how farmers make crop choice decisions.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture last delineated the regional boundary of the Corn Belt in 1950. Mixed-grain and livestock farming practices have today transitioned to annually rotating corn and soybeans, which has altered the geographic bounds of this region. To illustrate the changing geography of the Corn Belt, ArcGIS geoprocessing and spatial analysis tools, along with a simple, summative assessment using Census of Agriculture data, were used to map how the region's boundary has changed as myriad internal and external driving forces influence where farmers grow corn. Since 1950 the region's core has remained spatially stable as corn production has intensified, while the region's periphery has shifted to the northwest. The methods used to create this contemporary Corn Belt region illustrate how a regional boundary and internal regional intensities can be used to map agricultural land use change.

Sorghum is a type of grain, forage, and sugar crop that has been grown in warm, arid climates around the world for 10,000 years. It is a drought-tolerant crop, and is among the most efficient crops in the conversion of solar energy and use of water. In the United States, South America, and Australia, sorghum grain is used primarily for livestock feed and ethanol production and is becoming popular in the human food sector because of its use in gluten-free food products. The U.S. sorghum belt stretches from South Dakota to southern Texas. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, sorghum was harvested, on average, from more than 14 million acres of cropland. Today, the United States harvests just over 7 million acres, with most of those acres in Kansas (2.7 million) and Texas (2.25 million). This article provides a spatiotemporal analysis of sorghum grown in the United States over the past century to help understand farmers' decision making in response to changing markets, policy, and environmental variables.

Remotely sensed imagery has been used for decades to quantify the area, rates, and types of land use and land cover change (LULCC) from local to global scales. Common platforms used to capture data include satellite- and aerial-based sensors and cameras. Inseparable from those data are errors—misclassified pixels in sensor-based data or incorrect observations in aerial photographs—created by spectral confusion on the part of the sensor or by misclassifying the raw data during interpretation. Such errors, if not sufficiently explained or taken into consideration when reporting LULCC results, could lead to dubious conclusions. For this article, four commonly used and readily available data sets were analyzed to determine the amount of cropland change in South Dakota from circa 2006 to 2012. Two of the four data sets (the National Land Cover Dataset and the Cropland Data Layer) were created from satellite-based sensors, one was created from photographic data (from the National Agricultural Imaging Program), and the fourth was a survey-based assessment of agricultural land use (Census of Agriculture). Depending on which classes were used or how the data were manipulated prior to calculating areal totals, South Dakota had between 13 million and 19 million acres of cropland in 2012—a difference the size of the state of New Jersey—with rates of change from 2006 to 2012 ranging from 0.28 percent to 22.65 percent.

Fewer than 19% of Americans live in areas classified as “rural”. Moreover, only 0.7% of Americans (according to the 2007 USDA Census of Agriculture) are farmers. Yet, this miniscule segment of the population is responsible for maintaining well over 60% of our country's land through ranching and growing crops that provide food, fuel, and fiber. That is a substantial burden to bear, and yet it is one that often goes unnoticed by the remaining 99.3% of Americans. Because the agricultural landscape changes slowly, many of the transitions go unnoticed. On the other hand, “sexier” and more easily-politicized movements and rallying cries such as “save the land,” “eat organic,” “down with urban sprawl,” and “eat locally sourced food” are often front-page news. What most Americans fail to realize is that there are multitudes of socio-economic and socio-ecological forces that work together at multiple spatial and temporal scales driving these transformations. Without direct ties to agriculture, many people decry the transition from general farming practices to more corporatist and monocultural practices. Most fail to see their own complicity in this transition. Who among us hasn't recently eaten a hamburger, filled his or her car's tank with gas, enjoyed a carbonated soft drink, or in one way or another purchased and consumed one of the thousands of other products made from the corn-soy dominated agricultural landscape? One change happening on the rural landscape can be observed in the James River Valley of North and South Dakota (Figure 2). As our insatiable (global) appetite for Zea mays (corn) and Glycine max (soy) continues to increase, this region's agricultural landscape is being quietly transformed. The James River originates in Wells County North Dakota, and winds its way gently 710 miles south to just east of Yankton, South Dakota, where it meets the Missouri River. Known as the “unnavigable river” to early Dakota Indian tribes, its meager 700 foot drop in elevation creates a multitude of meanders and a slow rate of discharge, which creates – more in some years than others – difficulty in finding water deep enough to paddle a canoe. The southern portion of the James River Valley has long been entrenched in Corn Belt agriculture. For decades, counties from Sanborn County, SD south to the Missouri River have planted nearly 30% of their cropland to corn. Evidence of this early Corn Belt status can be seen in Mitchell, SD – home to the Corn Palace and the Mitchell High School Kernels, whose mascot, a supersized ear of corn named Cornelius, intimidates rival schools from around the region. But just to the north of Mitchell, some major changes are occurring. From LaMoure County, ND south to Spink, these counties have, over the past five decades, seen marked increase in the amount of cropland devoted to growing corn – in some cases by as much as twenty percent. In aggregate terms, this region's agricultural landscape hasn't changed much; in 1954 80% of the land was cropland and the remaining 20% was pastureland. In 2007, that proportion was more or less unchanged. Too flat to drain, yet too poor to crop, most pastureland has remained in pasture for lack of alternative uses. The remaining 80% that was used in the 1950s for growing wheat, oats, barley, flax, rye, and only meager acreages of corn, today grows an ever-increasing volume of corn and soy, where in some cases more than 75% of cropland is devoted to growing only those two crops. To handle this ever growing demand for corn and soy-based products, new, state-of-the-art infrastructure in this region has recently been built to help facilitate the storage, processing, and movement of massive amounts of grain - mostly corn and soy - to destinations as far away as Asia, opening up new and expanding global and domestic agricultural markets to the farmers of this region. One such facility (Figure 1), located just east of Andover, SD is capable of storing three million bushels of corn, soy, and wheat. It is part of the James River Valley's new agricultural landscape. Unit trains can be loaded in less than eight hours that are bound for Pacific Northwest ports. Grain from these storage facilities also serve other distant domestic agricultural rail-markets such as ethanol facilities in Illinois, Nebraska, and Missouri, and livestock producers in Missouri, Texas, and Arkansas. An identical facility has also been constructed on the west side of the Valley, about 70 miles west of Andover, in the small town of Roscoe. These two facilities, both on the east-west running BNSF rail line, are part of a much larger project where twelve South Dakota Wheat Growers facilities will be updated to handle and process ever-increasing quantities of corn and soy, making the ‘Wheat’ in the company name ever more irrelevant. The reasons for the upgrades are the increases both in the level of (grain handling) speed and (storage) space; upgrades that should help the farmers of this region market the products they are producing. South Dakota's agricultural landscape is changing, albeit slowly. Today's landscape is a mosaic of the old (e.g., the barbed-wire fence, grazing cattle, bales of hay, pastureland, and fields of wheat) alongside the new (e.g., the towering grain elevator and the ever-increasing presence of corn and soy). To the casual passerby these changes may appear benign. Such changes do, however, signal shifts in global forces that impact even the most secluded agricultural regions of our country.

Urbanization has been directly linked to decreases in area of agricultural lands and, as such, has been considered a threat to food security. Although the area of land used to produce food has diminished, often overlooked have been changes in agricultural output. The Eastern Corn Belt Plains (ECBP) is an important agricultural region in the U.S. Midwest. It has both gained a significant amount of urban land, primarily from the conversion of agricultural land between 1973 and 2000, and at the same time continued to produce ever-increasing quantities of agricultural products. By 2002, more corn, soybeans, and hogs were produced on a smaller agricultural land base than in 1974. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, ECBP ecoregion society appeared to have "had it both ways": more urbanization along with increased agricultural output.

Land use categorical changes, though not as numerous as one might suspect, vary by type within the three designated ecozones of the Corn Belt with the westernmost zone showing the most temporary change vis-a-vis the more permanent changes taking place in the eastern and central zones.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKey Words: rural rural communities sustainable development

Over the past century, the interactions between agricultural land use and government cropland retirement programs have affected pheasant population change. Two government land retirement programs that returned croplands to grasslands, Soil Bank in the 1960s and the current Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), help to illustrate these connections. From 2007 to 2010, South Dakota lost 41% of its CRP lands and experienced an 18% decline in pheasants per mile. However, because of where CRP expirations have occurred and where pheasant populations are found , some regional variability is seen. Western South Dakota (Region 1) had an 80% increase in pheasants per mile and a 51% decrease in CRP land, while central South Dakota (Region 2) had a 22% increase in pheasants per mile and a 42% decrease in CRP land. Region 3 saw a 51% decrease in pheasants per mile and a 25% decrease in CRP land, and Region 4 had a 45% decrease in both pheasants per mile and land in the CRP. These differences are explained by regional land use and land cover, the extent to which row crop agriculture dominates each region, and the variability in the abundance of pheasants found in each region.

Focus on GeographyVolume 54, Issue 3 p. 111-112 A Picture is Worth 972 Words: The Old, Red Barn Chris Laingen, Chris Laingen Chris Laingen is an assistant professor in the Geography Program at Eastern Illinois University. His primary research interests are regional, rural, and agricultural geography with a specific focus on Corn Belt agriculture and rural land use change. The author may be contacted at: crlaingen@eiu.edu.Search for more papers by this author Chris Laingen, Chris Laingen Chris Laingen is an assistant professor in the Geography Program at Eastern Illinois University. His primary research interests are regional, rural, and agricultural geography with a specific focus on Corn Belt agriculture and rural land use change. The author may be contacted at: crlaingen@eiu.edu.Search for more papers by this author First published: 14 September 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8535.2011.00032.x Photograph by the author Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume54, Issue3Fall 2011Pages 111-112 RelatedInformation

Focus on GeographyVolume 54, Issue 2 p. 60-69 Adding Another Notch to America’s Corn Belt Chris Laingen, Chris Laingen Chris Laingen is an assistant professor in the Geography Program at Eastern Illinois University. His primary research interests are regional, rural, and agricultural geography with a specifi c focus on Corn Belt agriculture and rural land use change. The author may be contacted at: crlaingen@eiu.edu.Search for more papers by this authorCameron Craig, Cameron Craig Chris Laingen is an assistant professor in the Geography Program at Eastern Illinois University. His primary research interests are regional, rural, and agricultural geography with a specifi c focus on Corn Belt agriculture and rural land use change. The author may be contacted at: crlaingen@eiu.edu.Search for more papers by this author Chris Laingen, Chris Laingen Chris Laingen is an assistant professor in the Geography Program at Eastern Illinois University. His primary research interests are regional, rural, and agricultural geography with a specifi c focus on Corn Belt agriculture and rural land use change. The author may be contacted at: crlaingen@eiu.edu.Search for more papers by this authorCameron Craig, Cameron Craig Chris Laingen is an assistant professor in the Geography Program at Eastern Illinois University. His primary research interests are regional, rural, and agricultural geography with a specifi c focus on Corn Belt agriculture and rural land use change. The author may be contacted at: crlaingen@eiu.edu.Search for more papers by this author First published: 07 June 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8535.2011.00027.xCitations: 5 Photographs and maps by authors unless otherwise noted Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume54, Issue2Summer 2011Pages 60-69 RelatedInformation