A farm about 5 miles southeast of Des Moines is home to a new kind of billboard message – field art. It’s Iowa’s first outdoor advertising of its type for the purpose, which is to attract Corteva Agriscience’s seed business headquarters to the state once the company splits next year.
The art covers about 4 acres of a former soybean field and is positioned to be viewable from planes arriving at the Des Moines airport. Passengers looking out their window will see the outline of the state of Iowa tilled into the ground along with the message, “Plant the HQ Here,” and a corn kernel waypoint marking Johnston.
Corteva already has significant operations in the state, employing more than 1,000 at its Johnston campus and hundreds more at research and production facilities in 10 other agriculture-rich communities across Iowa. However, a coalition of communities, public officials, business leaders and agriculture industry groups has come together to encourage Corteva’s leadership to bring the headquarters back to the state.
Optimal conditions
Iowa, the coalition believes, has the most fertile soil to plant both successful crops AND agriculture businesses. After all, the state is No. 1 for corn, farmland harvested, eggs, hogs, ethanol and biodiesel. There were more than 7,000 Iowa-based patents for the biosciences alone awarded between 2015 and 2021; and, Iowa’s venture capital funding for bioscience businesses grew three times more than the U.S. as a whole. See more about the state’s productivity, innovation and talent here.
Only in Iowa
The art itself came about in a very Iowa fashion. Local farmers worked together to find the best field for the installation and requested a donation be made to the Carlisle “Trail Blazers” 4-H club in lieu of compensation for use of their land. The operators of area pumpkin patches recommended the artistic farmer who plowed in the design, using specialized GPS programming and a John Deere tractor. This same farmer has previously installed corn and tulip mazes for top Iowa agritourism destinations.
Keep an eye out for the artwork on your next flight and watch the video to see how it was created. And, if you believe in Iowa’s agriculture leadership and the mission of this campaign, sign the petition encouraging Corteva to bring its seed business HQ home.
