ABSTRACT
As early as 1843 in Rothamsted, England, and 1876 in the Morrow Plots in Illinois, U.S.A., agricultural researchers recognized the importance of documenting the impacts of long-term farming systems on crop productivity, soil quality and economic performance. The link between soil quality and farm viability was well understood, as Andrew Sloan Draper, who was President of the University of Illinois when the Morrow Plots were established, stated prophetically that “The wealth of Illinois is in her soil, and her strength lies in its intelligent development” (University of Illinois [UI], 2015). More recently, long-term organic farming system trials across the U.S. have been established to capture similar information. These long-term crop rotation studies also enable more robust economic analyses of potential profit outcomes as compared to experiments of shorter duration (Delbridge, Coulter, King, Sheaffer, & Wyse, 2011).
