The family farmers regenerating the soil of America’s heartland

Iowa has long been known as the heartland of farming in the U.S. But a changing climate and environment have created challenges for growing food here. Rising temperatures and more frequent droughts make it difficult for crops to retain water, and more extreme precipitation storms are eroding soil and depleting its health. However, family farmers here, some of whom have owned and worked the land for generations, recognize that soil health and farm resilience are crucial in mitigating the worst effects of climate change, thereby helping ensure the long-term sustainability of their farms and ability to grow food for their communities. National Geographic photographer Rena Effendi traveled to Charles City, Iowa, to see the movement to safeguard our food systems—and the communities that steward them—firsthand. 

Effendi met Wendy Johnson at her own farm, Jóia Food & Fiber Farm, in Charles City, where she also co-manages her family’s nearby farm, Center View Farms Co. Johnson’s grandfather and father established Center View Farms Co. who grew it to its current size—about 1,100 acres of corn, soybeans, small grains, and hay. When Johnson was growing up here in the 1980s, many families were leaving farming due to a perfect storm of land and commodity price boom-and-busts cycles, debt, and two major droughts.

Johnson herself left to pursue a career in fashion in California. But when her grandmother passed away, Johnson began thinking about the legacy of the family farm: She didn’t want to see all the hard work her grandparents and parents put into the land here lost. In 2010, Johnson returned to Iowa with her husband, Johnny, and began co-managing the farm with her father.

Center View Farms was already an early adopter of no-till farming. Tilling the soil (turning it over to plant new crops) actually degrades soil health, displaces or kills the microbes that help make healthy soil, and contributes to erosion. Experts estimate that the planet loses billions of tons of fertile soil each year, at a rate that could cause all fertile soil to be depleted in 150 years. This would be a disaster for the world’s food systems—unless regenerative agricultural practices, which help to combat climate change and work to grow food while restoring nature, are adopted. For example, in no-till farming, which minimizes soil disturbance to reduce erosion, increase water conservation, and improve soil health—new seeds are planted directly into the residue of previous crops.

But Johnson wanted to do more.

Since she moved back, Johnson has been working with Sarah Carlson, senior programs and member engagement director of Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI), to revolutionize the way her family farms. PFI is a farmer-led nonprofit and recipient of funds from a $216 million investment made by food and drink company PepsiCo to support farming groups to scale regenerative agriculture in the U.S. Through this program, PFI aims to build resilient farms and communities by partnering with farmers like Johnson to diversify crop rotations and plant cover crops—another way to keep living roots in the soil year-round. According to PepsiCo, which relies on approximately 50 crops and ingredients across 60 countries, “a better food system can lead to better outcomes for Earth, and all of us.” It all starts with healthier soil.

With support from PFI and PepsiCo, Johnson planted her first cover crop soon after she returned to Iowa—oats. Then she tried rye. Now with corn as the main crop, the farm’s cover crops include oats, rye, canola, camelina, radish, turnip, kale, millet, red clover, white clover, sorghum, sudangrass, barley, winter peas, and cowpeas.  Johnson wasn’t alone in this work, either. The number of cover crop acres in Iowa has risen from fewer than 10,000 in 2009 to more than a million in 2022, bringing transformative change to the landscape.  

Johnson also attended the field days hosted by PFI that help connect farmers and enable them to learn from each other’s innovations. “I loved those field days and meeting other farmers,” she said. “The open-minded knowledge sharing was a total one-eighty from what I grew up with. PFI gathers a network of farmers who believe the land provides—that it matters how we treat the land, because it affects social, community, and financial aspects beyond farming.” 

Healthy family farms not only provide more sustainable food for the rest of us, they also create vibrant rural communities where families can keep their farms thriving for the next generation.

“Human connection is the way we make behavior change,” Carlson said. Carlson also grew up in the Midwest, spending several years on her grandparents’ farms—she knows the impact of working one-on-one with farmers and other landowners. 

And still, Johnson wanted to innovate. While Center View Farms Co. continues to provide the main income stream for her parents, Johnson started Jóia Food & Fiber Farm, a certified organic farm, as an incubator in agroecology to test other climate-resilient and restorative practices. At one PFI field day, she learned about organic hog raising. Now, she raises heritage pigs, sheep, turkeys, guinea fowl, and chickens, and runs a small herd of cattle for direct-to-consumer markets. She grows trees and shrubs that produce fruit and nuts, uses adaptive grazing management on pastures and grows small grains like Kernza®.

“Wendy is constantly innovating, seeking best practices to run trials on her land and breaking deeply rooted traditions if she sees the benefits for the soil and for the environment,” Effendi said. “She's fearless in all her efforts. “

Like many family farmers in Iowa today, Johnson wants to be the best steward of the land that she can be. She knows it’s the key to sustainability for the next generations. “Food is life,” she said. “As long as we’re protecting the soil, we have an opportunity for a brighter, better future.”