Wes Jackson - new agriculture?

In BriefWe need new strategies for agriculture that emphasize efficient nutrient use in order to lower production costs and minimize negative environmental effects. The trouble is, the best soils on the best landscapes are already being farmed. Much of the future expansion of agriculture will be onto marginal lands where the risk of irreversible degradation under annual grain production is high. As these areas become degraded, expensive chemical, energy, and equipment inputs will become less effective and much less affordable.

The sooner successful alternatives are available, the more land we can save from degradation. Our vision is predicated on the need to end the ecological damage to agricultural land associated with grain production—damage such as soil erosion, poisoning by pesticides, and biodiversity loss. The most cost-effective way to do this and stay fed is to perennialize the landscape.

At The Land Institute, we’ve spent the past 30 years devoted to developing herbaceous perennial grains to be grown in mixed species polycultures. The result is crops with deep root structures that can survive the winter and stay in the soil year after year. This not only reduces the need to crop, turn, and plant seeds each year—the largest energy input in agriculture—it also keeps carbon in the ground, reduces harmful runoff by eliminating tilling, and prevents biodiversity loss by restoring prairie systems.

Our first farmer-ready crops will be available on a limited scale in a decade, but we believe it’s time the government came up with a plan to start our transition toward a sustainable agricultural future. That’s why we advocate using the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s current five-year plans as mileposts in a 50-Year Farm Bill. We do not seek USDA funding from this bill for The Land Institute or any other particular organization.

The transition of agriculture from an extractive to a renewable economy in the foreseeable future can now be realistically imagined. Our proposal is ambitious, but it is necessary and possible. We have little doubt that we can make the agricultural transition fast enough to stay ahead of the adjustments imposed upon us by climate change and the end of the fossil-fuel era. If we humans can keep ourselves fed without destroying the planet in the process, we’ll have a chance to solve our other problems.