Newew Iowa State Uni­­versity (ISU) Extension economist Wendong Zhang traces his interest in agriculture back to childhood days spent helping harvest wheat on his grandparents’ farm in rural China.

"In some ways, my grandfather’s farm in Shandong Province in northeastern China was similar to an Iowa farm," he says. "Located in the western portion of the province, most of the family-run farms rotated crops between wheat and corn."

The son of a physics teacher and an accountant, Zhang says his interest in how farmers interact with nature led him to study environmental...