Wes Jackson
Asking whether grain could be perennial, and then building an institution that would fund fifty years of the answer.
The record
- Standing
- foundational work
- Based
- The Land Institute · Salina, Kansas
- Founded
- The Land Institute, with Dana Jackson, in 1976, as a nonprofit exploring sustainable alternatives in agriculture, energy, shelter and waste disposal.
- The idea
- Natural Systems Agriculture — perennial grain crops grown in diverse mixtures modelled on the form and function of the native Kansas prairie.
- Trained as
- Plant geneticist; emeritus professor of biology.
- Recognition
- MacArthur Fellow, 1992.
- Tenure
- President of The Land Institute for forty years, until 2016.
Standing is this studio’s placement of the work, not a ranking of the person, and it is the one line here that is a judgement rather than a cited fact.
The work
The prairie holds its soil, feeds itself, and returns every year without being planted. Jackson’s question was why the grain fields that replaced it could not do the same, and his answer was to model agriculture on the ecosystem it displaced rather than on the factory.
That meant perennial grains in mixed stands — Natural Systems Agriculture — which in 1976 was a thoroughly unfundable proposition. Founding The Land Institute with Dana Jackson was the practical move: an institution can hold a fifty-year breeding programme in a way that a grant cycle cannot.
Kernza, the perennial grain now in commercial food products, came out of that institution. It took four decades, which is roughly what he said it would take.
Where to read them
Sources for this record
Corrections
This record was assembled from the sources above, and nothing in it was inferred to fill a gap. If it is about you and it is wrong, or you would rather not be listed, write and it changes.