Designing Circularity into Corn-Soybean Systems

Abstract . Corn-soybean rotations are the predominant U.S. cropping system in terms of land area (92 million acres of corn and 84 million acres of soybeans; USDA, 2020), production (346 million tons of corn and 119.5 million tons of soybeans), and economic value ($75 billion from corn and $21.5 billion from soybean). More than 70% of U.S. corn was used for livestock feed or ethanol in 2019, while only a small percentage went to human consumption. In addition, corn productivity comes with environmental costs, chiefly in the form of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water pollution. In this article, we briefly discuss the steps needed to transform our current linear corn-soybean systems into circular subsystems for open-field production of corn and soybeans in the U.S. Midwest.