Agricultural scientists are changing the way they think about how and why they do field research. A recent article published in Nature Food suggests that a key motivation for this change is the mounting evidence highlighting the limits of conventional small plot research. Historically, conventional field research has lacked applicability at scale. Critics also suggest that research has been prone to generating information that is less actionable, and is structured so that recommendations tend to trickle down from inaccessible analyses and peer-reviewed publications.