Tending Iowa’s Land: A Discussion of Moving Our State Toward Environmental Sustainability

In the last 200 years, much of Iowa's self-sustaining prairie landscape has been transformed into agricultural lands that have lost their original resilience and health. How did this happen, and what can be done to restore and ensure the environmental health of both agricultural and natural lands?  

Tending Iowa's Land: Pathways to a Sustainable Future is the first book to consider challenges to Iowa's soils, flowing water, climate, and native biodiversity as an interacting whole. The book proposes alternative futures beneficial to both nature and agriculture.

Join us for a discussion of this important new book, the recipient of the 2023 Midwest Book Award for Nature.  Following an introduction by the book’s editor, nine contributing authors will describe their chapters and dig into questions posed by our search for environmental sustainability. Questions from the audience will be welcome. 

Participants:

Book editor - Cornelia Mutel
Soils  - Kathleen Woida
Climate change  - William Gutowski
Loss of native biodiversity  - Ron Eckoff, Marlene Ehresman, Jim Pease, Tom Rosburg

Moderator:  Neil Hamilton, Drake Agricultural Law Center