How Should Iowa’s Agricultural Landscape Look?

Twenty-five years from now, what will fertile agricult rural landscapes of today look like? What benefits will they provide to the people who rely on them? And, if people want something different, how might they craft the landscapes they prefer? These were the questions that underlay the creation of the six photorealistic landscapes we share with you here. We used these images as a tool to enhance communication with diverse agricultural and environmental stakeholders about the management of rural Iowa. Previous studies have shown that visualization can be a useful tool for this kind of engagement; they help set a level playing field for discussion, whereby miscommunications commonly associated with complex information are minimized and divergent interpretations can be more openly conveyed. Additionally, such images can evoke deeper elements of human consciousness than words do alone