Eyes on Iowa

There's an argument to be made that as Iowa goes, so goes the future of American farming. Iowa produces more than its fair share of our feed crops and industrial food inputs. Nowhere has industrial agriculture been more important in changing the face of the countryside, and yet fewer Iowans than ever are actually farming, and diversified farms have for the most part gone the way of the VCR.

In a series of reports, Grist investigates what's happening in Iowa and what Iowans are doing to get Iowa -- and perhaps all of American farming -- on a different track.