WYOMING, Iowa (AP) — Taking a late-summer country drive in the Midwest means venturing into the corn zone, snaking between 12-foot-tall green, leafy walls that seem to block out nearly everything other than the sun and an occasional water tower. The skyscraper-like corn is a part of rural America as much as cavernous red barns and placid cows.

Short corn offers farmers a variety that can withstand powerful windstorms that could become more frequent due to climate change. (AP video by Nicholas Ingram)

"As you drive across the Midwest, maybe in the next seven, eight, 10 years, you're going to see a lot of this out there," said Cameron Sorgenfrey, an eastern Iowa farmer

Small-stature corn is being tested in the Midwest in hopes of offering farmers a variety that can withstand powerful, climate-driven windstorms.

But soon, that towering corn might become a miniature of its former self, replaced by stalks only half as tall as the green giants that have dominated fields for so long. “As you drive across the Midwest,