The Land Institute
Dana Jackson, executive director
Wes Jackson, founder
Tom Mulhern, development director
Route 3, Water Well Road
Salina, Kan. 67401
(913) 823-5376

Wes Jackson, a Ph. D. in plant genetics and creator of the model Environmental Studies program at California State University/Sacramento, gave up a tenured professorship in 1976 to move back home to Salina and carry out his dream.

That dream, The Land Institute, has become a national model for sustainable agriculture, and Jackson is one of the nation's leading experts.

The institute serves two major purposes: It is a center for serious research into sustainable agriculture, specifically an agriculture for the prairie; and it is an alternative school, providing an intensive, hands-on graduate course in sustainable agriculture for 10 to 12 committed students each year.

But that came later, after fits and starts in the first few years and a disastrous house fire in 1976. The Jacksons started out experimenting with a range of ideas, from building houses out of hay bales to tests with wind power. Agriculture was always a key element, though, and it came to the fore after Jackson published a seminal book, "New Roots for Agriculture," in 1980. Since then, much of the Land Institute's work has been built around its premise, which in essence is that agriculture, in the form that humans have practiced it for 10,000 years, creates as many problems as it solves.

Jackson proposed a new agriculture, based on the model that humans should tailor crops to the natural ecosystem, rather than imposing unnatural crops on unsuitable land.

On the prairie, specifically, the natural habitat is composed of perennial grasses growing in considerable diversity. By replacing it with an agriculture composed of annual grasses grown as a monoculture (entire fields limited to a single species such as wheat or corn), humans have misused and damaged the ecosystem.

The fundamental question that the Land Institute seeks to answer, then, is whether it is possible, taking advantage of appropriate farming techniques, develop new cropping systems, based on a PERENNIAL POLYCULTURE, that would allow small farmers to exist profitably on the basis of an agriculture that, because it is natural, would restore the soil rather than depleting it.

In its RESEARCH component, the institute's staff of 10, including plant breeders, an ecologist, and a plant pathologist, identify, breed and nurture native perennial crops that bear edible seeds or grains (including wild rye, Eastern gamagrass and Illinois bundleflower) and that may eventually be commercially feasible. In a variety of other projects, they've also planted a display herb and plant garden of prairie flora; preserved an 8 1/2 acre section of hilltop land as virgin tallgrass prairie (with more than 200 species of plants occurring naturally in a meadow of incredible beauty); and examine a variety of alternative energy and environmental strategies.

Working out of a large, four-part greenhouse and offices in a former modern split-level farmhouse on the institute property, the institute's scientists study in concert with 10 INTERNS, graduate students (mostly in their 20s or early 30s) who receive a small stipend to participate in the competitive program. From February through November (a full 10-month growing season), the students read, attend classes and study in the mornings during spring and fall, then work on the farm afternoons and all day during the summer months. During my visit, one group was working on the finicky, labor-intensive job of harvesting Illinois bundleflower seeds, which grow in a small, crinkly pod about the size of a black golf ball. Another, Sarah Wilson, a Utah native with degrees in Russian and political science, was hard at work on an effort to convert sorghum into a perennial by crossing it with Johnson grass, a notorious prairie weed. Other experiments seek to increase the yield of wild perennials through selective breeding. Each student conducts a specific research project during the 10-month term. The long-range hope, of course, is that the students will take the new ideas they get here and pump them back into the system, as working agronomists or college teachers.

Another project, recently funded and to get under way this fall, is the SUNSHINE FARM PROJECT, an effort to develop "on-farm renewable energy" resources to reduce U.S. agriculture's current dependence on fossil fuels and non-renewable resources. This will include a variety of strategies, ranging from research into using refined soybean oil (!) in place of Diesel fuel in tractor engines; wind power and photoelectric cells to generate electricity and pump water; and using draft horses in place of fuel-powered equipment for some chores.

Finally, Jackson is considering an extensive, long-term project in the small farm town of Matfield Green in the Flint Hills region near Wichita: "exploring ecological community development, theory and practice as an alternative to conventional economic development."

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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