The Land Institute

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The Land Institute
File:The Land Institute Logo.jpg
Formation 1 August 1976 (1976-08-01)[1]
Founders Wes Jackson, Dana Jackson
Purpose Plant breeding
Location
  • 2440 E. Water Well Road Salina, KS 67401[2]
President
 Wes Jackson, Ph.D.[3]
Chairman
 Angus Wright, Ph.D.[3]
Secretary
 Jan Flora, Ph.D.[3]
Budget (2014)
 $3.1 million USD[4]
Staff (2014)
 28[4]
Mission "to develop an agriculture that will save soil from being lost or poisoned, while promoting a community life at once prosperous and enduring."[5][6]
Website landinstitute.org

The Land Institute is a non-profit research, education, and policy organization dedicated to sustainable agriculture based in Salina, Kansas, United States. Their goal is to develop an agricultural system based on perennial crops that "has the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops".[5] The organization has trademarked Kernza, a wheatgrass grain in development.

History

The institute was founded on 28 acres in 1976 by plant geneticist and MacArthur "genius grant" recipient Wes Jackson and Dana Jackson, who has worked with the Land Stewardship Project in Minnesota.[1][7][8] As of 2014, the organization owns at least 879 acres of land.[4]

The Land Institute promotes "natural systems agriculture" through plant breeding.[9] Land Institute scientists are cross breeding the annual crop plants wheat, sorghum and sunflower with wild, perennial relatives to create perennial varieties.[10][11] Using selective breeding and other techniques, they also are working to domesticate wild perennials.[12] The organization's concept of developing perennial crops is modeled after the ecological design of prairies, which are known for their soil quality, deep root systems, and self-sufficiency.[9][13][14] In an interview, Wes Jackson called the concept "an inversion of industrial agriculture."[9] Perennial polyculture systems may have a variety of benefits over conventional annual monocultures such as increased biodiversity, reduced soil erosion, and reduced inputs of irrigation, fossil fuels, fertilizers, and pesticides.[15][16] Perennial crops also show promise in root-based carbon sequestration.[17][18] The organization's achievement of productive and genetically stable perennial crop plants for use by farmers is expected to take several decades.[11][13] Critics note the future economic challenge in profitably harvesting perennial polyculture.[16]

Since 1979, The Land Institute has annually hosted its Prairie Festival, which includes lectures, art displays, tours, and music performances.[19][20]

Kernza

File:Harvesting Cycle 2 Thinopyrum intermedium.jpg
Harvesting a Thinopyrum intermedium breeding nursery at The Land Institute

The Land Institute is developing an intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium) grain trademarked as Kernza, which has not yet been sold commercially as of 2013.[13][14][21] As of 2012, the domestication has doubled Kernza's seed size and increased seed production by twenty percent.[11] Kernza has already been made into beer and bread, which are often served at the Prairie Festival.[18][20] Kernza contains gluten, but lacks the complement that enables bread to rise.[22] Wes Jackson predicts that Kernza will be released within another decade.[9][13]

Appearances in published works

The Land Institute's work was featured in Michael Pollan's New York Times best-seller The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.[23][24] The general modus operandi of developing a sustainable, high yield, low labor, agricultural model based on the culturation of crop polycultures, developed by The Land Institute forms the substance of the chapter How Will We Feed Ourselves? in Janine Benyus's book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.[25]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Trademark information. Kernza. LegalForce. Retrieved: 2013-10-26.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ "The 10 Best Books of 2006", The New York Times, December 12, 2006
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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