Weather, technology, markets and farmers’ own choices all shape where crops can be grown. We project how the map of major US crops could shift over the coming decades, and test those projections with the people who know each region best.
Thriving Future Cropscapes
Bringing stakeholders and data together to imagine and enact thriving agricultural futures.
Thriving Future Cropscapes is a four-year project funded by the National Science Foundation that brings together stakeholders from many sectors, regions and disciplines to anticipate and prepare for the major changes likely to shape cropping systems in the southern and central US over the next five decades. The project focuses on Georgia, Nebraska and Ohio: three important and diverse farming states likely to face different social, economic and climatic challenges and opportunities over the coming century.
Cropping systems are shaped by many intersecting forces: regional soils, producers’ goals, national policy priorities and more. Our interdisciplinary team, spanning Emory University, Arizona State University, Ohio State University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, combines historical analyses, predictive modeling, expert surveys and iterative conversations with farmers. We aim not only to generate more useful, accurate and interesting projections of future cropscapes, but also to conduct engaged and responsive research that attends equally to agriculture’s human and environmental worlds.
Our goals
- Understand current realities. Using historical information and modeling, combined with insight from farmers and industry leaders, we assemble the best of what we currently know about major cropping systems in each state and the realities that drive or limit future change.
- Anticipate future change. With community partners, we identify new technologies, crops, management practices and policies that could transform regional cropping systems, and the on-farm realities that shape access to these opportunities.
- Leverage opportunities. With community partners, we co-create regionally tailored strategies that build on emerging opportunities to foster thriving agricultural futures in each state.
On the project site you can explore future projections of how cultivation patterns may change in your region, farmer insights (stories and adaptive strategies from the field), and practitioner insights from partners in research, policy and technology.
Project timeline
- Fall 2023: the project starts with funding from the NSF DISES program.
- Spring 2024: historical scoping, regional key-informant interviews and database construction.
- Fall 2024: predictive models of agricultural land use.
- Spring 2025: farmer focus groups in each state (round 1).
- Fall 2025: Delphi surveys in each state and at the national level, and integration of farmer and practitioner insights into the models.
- Spring 2026: farmer focus groups in each state (round 2).
- Fall 2026: project synthesis.
- Spring 2027: project partners convene in Atlanta to translate findings into action.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2307271. Contact the project team at thrivingfuturecropscapes@gmail.com.
Publications
- Burchfield, E. (2022). Shifting cultivation geographies in the Central and Eastern US. Environmental Research Letters, 17, 054049.
- Schumacher, B., Burchfield, E., Bean, B., Yost, M. (2023). Leveraging important covariate groups for corn yield prediction. Agriculture, 13(3), 618.
- Burchfield, E., Nelson, K. (2021). Agricultural yield geographies in the United States. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abe88d
- Burchfield, E., Matthews-Pennanen, N., Stoebner, J., Lant, C. (2019). Changing yields in the Central United States under climate and technological change. Climatic Change, 159, 329-346. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02567-7. Preprint available here.