Category: In the News

America’s oldest test plots prepare for their next chapter.

Story and Photos by Katie Knapp

“No sir we don’t mess around, our library’s underground. ‘Cause you can’t throw shade on the corn.”

These words finish the chorus of the University of Illinois a cappella group The Other Guys’ famous song about a corn field in the center of campus.

It’s no ordinary corn field next to no ordinary library building.

Legend has it that the library was built underground in the 1960s to not shade out the field. University documents suggest it was for aesthetics, but mission accomplished either way.

The design has preserved the most important one-acre corn field in the western hemisphere.

The Morrow Plots were started 150 years ago as a five-acre research field near the agricultural buildings. The section remaining today has one plot with corn grown continuously each year since then, another in a corn/soybean rotation, and a third in a small grains/soybean/corn rotation.

The Morrow Plots’ longevity is second only to that at Rothamsted Research in England where winter wheat has been studied consistently since 1843.

”If I could go back and talk to the researchers who started the Morrow Plots in 1876, I’d first thank them,” says Crop Sciences Department Head Dr. Adam Davis. ”They were asking decadal questions, questions fundamental to crop production in Illinois.”

”One of the big lessons from the Morrow Plots is that you have to take care of your soil. If you mine your soil, you end up with corn cobs about that big,” he says picking up an ear from last year’s harvest dwarfed by his hand and with only a few yellow kernels. ”If you feed your soil, you can end up with really good yields and sustainable crop production.”

Presumably this was the original hypothesis.

On the original agriculture building dedicated in 1901, just steps from the field, the words of then University President Andrew Sloan Draper are etched along the entrance: ”The wealth of Illinois is in her soil and her strength lies in its intelligent development.”

Davis calls the field a living monument. And the University is rightfully celebrating it, now protected as a National Historic Landmark, this fall.

First thing’s first, though. They must take care of a squirrel problem.

October 3, 2025 | Pamela Smith writing for Progressive Farmer

A 1-acre field of Flanagan silt loam located in the heart of the University of Illinois’ Champaign-Urbana campus is proof research can have a long arm.

Since 1876, the Morrow Plots have continuously provided insights on soil health, crop rotation and other aspects of agricultural productivity. The oldest agricultural experiment field in the United States and the second oldest in the world, the plot was dedicated as a National Historic Landmark in 1968.

So hallowed is the ground that legend has it the adjoining undergraduate library was built beneath ground to avoid casting a shadow on the crops. While some say that’s a myth, a song dedicated to the plot includes this cautioning reprise: “You can’t throw shade on the corn.”

HISTORY CLASS

Several historic field experiments continue to serve as a rich resource for scientists by providing archived samples and ongoing data collection on soil, crops and related cropping-system outcomes. England’s Rothamsted Research (Harpenden, Hertfordshire) site dates from 1843 and is considered the oldest continuing agricultural field experiment in the world, which served as the inspiration for the Morrow Plots.

May 24, 2023 | Jude Panlilio writing for The Daily Illini

When one thinks of iconic campus locations around the University, students typically consider the photogenic Main Quad or Alma Mater as contenders — the nondescript plots of farmland across from the Main Library might not be the first thing that comes to mind. 

The importance of these titular Morrow Plots is almost always left a mystery until students run into the countless rumors that swirl about the ordinary-looking field.

“I know what they are because I have to walk past them sometimes,” said Akshar Goyal, freshman in Engineering. “I heard that if you walk on them, you would be immediately expelled.”

While the myths around the plots are colorful, with some considering a stroll through the fields at the stroke of midnight before graduation as the ultimate challenge, they pale in comparison to the Morrow Plots’ true significance to agricultural history and global farm innovation.

The Morrow Plots are America’s oldest, and the world’s second-oldest, continuous agricultural experiment. Founded in 1876 by professor Manly Miles, only nine years after the University was established, the plots were a hotbed of innovation in the field of agricultural science. 

The discovery of many valuable agricultural breakthroughs, such as the positive effects of crop rotation on soil fertility, are credited to the plots. While only three of the original 10 plots remain, this recognized National Historic Landmark is still used for research to this very day. 

“People don’t realize what a rare resource we have,” said Andrew Margenot, current head of the Morrow Plots Committee. “Very indirectly, lots of insights from the plots are broadly applicable to crop production anywhere in the world.”

February 12 | Holly Spangler writing for Farm Progress

Here’s what the oldest continuous experimental crop research field in the Western Hemisphere, founded in 1876, means for Illinois agriculture in 2023.

The Morrow Plots at the University of Illinois have inspired folklore, demonstrations and even a college song or two, but the historic plots hold significant research that helped develop crop production in the Midwest across the late 19th and much of the 20th centuries.

Established in 1876, the Morrow Plots are the oldest continuous experimental crop field in America, and the second oldest in the world, behind Rothamsted research station in England. Three of the 10 original plots — developed to test crop rotation — remain and are a protected National Historic Landmark.

Andrew Margenot, soil science assistant professor, chairs the Morrow Plots Committee and offers more insight into how Illinois agriculture has benefited from research on the plots.

What were the first Morrow Plots researchers trying to learn? At the time, they were looking at corn on corn or corn rotated with oats and clover, which was commonly raised back then for livestock like horses. Within about three decades, they went from looking at how rotating crops could improve yields to studying how nutrient inputs could improve yields. People weren’t really fertilizing with concentrated inputs until the 1900s, and they weren’t available at scale until after World War II; before then, it was largely manure.

That had to really change things. Yes. In 1904, they kicked off the second of five phases of the Morrow Plots that looked beyond crop rotations. That was looking at fertilizer inputs. Phase 3 was introducing hybrids and commercial fertilizers; phase 4 introduced soybeans to replace oats in the corn-oat rotation.

But their effect has been the same? Right. Long story short, the Morrow Plots have preserved their mission of looking at long-term effects on soils since 1876 of how we grow crops and how it affects yields.