Check out the new website for the WPP Research Site at WPPRESEARCH.ORG!

The Woody Perennial Polyculture (WPP) Research Site is a new large-scale research site on the South Farms of the Urbana-Champaign campus that studies the agricultural and ecological characteristics of a savanna-based agroecosystem. Primary crops include chestnut, hazelnut, apple, grape, raspberry, current, and pasture. Researchers will test predictions that a WPP can decrease soil erosion, sequester atmospheric carbon, stabilize water fluxes, foster biodiversity, and produce an economic profit, especially in relation to the conventional corn-soybean rotation.

Originally funded and planted by the Agroecology and Sustainable Agriculture Program and the Department of Crop Sciences in the spring of 2012, the project has since received over $125,000 in further research, education, and outreach funding from the Student Sustainability Committee and the Illinois Water Resources Council. The WPP Research Site is fundamentally changing the conversation in the related fields of Permaculture, agroforestry, agroecology.

Come visit the site during one of the spring tours (sign up here):

April 12th, 10am
April 14th, 1pm

For more information on the background, theory, research, and outreach, please visit the project’s website at wppresearch.org!