Drought Tolerance, Diversity, and Déjà Vu: What Dakota Lakes Is Teaching the World

Root exudates from maize feed beneficial soil microbes, forming a protective rhizosphere that improves water retention and supports drought tolerance under diversified crop rotations.

By Buz Kloot

I’ve had the good fortune to spend time with Natalie Sturm and, before that, to follow the work at the Dakota Lakes Research Farm (DLRF) for more than a decade. Long before her thesis made the rounds online, what struck me was not just the data, but the patience of the body of work at DLRF itself — decades of asking the same simple question in slightly different ways: What happens when we let diversity do its work?

That question resurfaced again recently in a lively discussion following a post about Natalie’s work and the podcast we recorded with her. The comments will sound familiar to anyone who spends time in soil health circles: debates about no-till versus tillage, roots versus trees, microbes versus mechanics, plants versus animals. Lots of passion. Lots of partial truths.

What’s helpful is when we can step back and ask: Are others, in other places, seeing the same thing?

Two recent peer-reviewed studies suggest the answer is yes.

A long-term experiment in Canada¹ found that diversifying maize rotations reduced yield losses under drought by roughly 17%, even when no-till alone did not make the difference. The key wasn’t a single “silver bullet” practice, but the cumulative effect of diverse rotations that build soil organic matter and improve how plants experience water stress under dry conditions.

More recently, a 20-year rotation experiment in China² showed that higher crop diversity dramatically increased maize drought tolerance at the seedling stage. What stood out was how this happened: thicker roots, more stable rhizosphere microbial communities, and enzyme systems that didn’t collapse under drought. In other words, diversity didn’t just help plants survive drought — it helped the soil system stay functional while stressed. 

That should sound familiar to anyone paying attention at Dakota Lakes.

What Natalie’s work keeps reminding us — and what these studies quietly confirm — is that drought resilience is not something we bolt on in a crisis year. It’s something we grow, slowly, through intentional crop rotation diversity that feeds roots, microbes, and soil structure over time.

Different continents. Different soils. Same direction of travel.

And that, to me, is where the real confidence comes from.

1. Long-term rotation & drought resistance (Canada)

Renwick LLR, Deen W, Silva L, et al. Long-term crop rotation diversification enhances maize drought resistance through soil organic matter. Environmental Research Letters. 2021;16(8):084067.doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac1468

2. Crop diversity, roots, microbes & drought tolerance (China)

Jia R, Chen M, Zhou J, et al. Diversified crop rotations strengthen maize seedling drought tolerance by modulating rhizosphere microbiota and enzyme activities. Plant, Cell & Environment. 2025;48:8604–8615.doi:10.1111/pce.70150

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