A perennial solution for agriculture

Posted 10/08/98

Wes Jackson, a plant geneticist and progenitor of a revolutionary concept called natural systems agriculture, will give a talk at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 22, in 105 Dartmouth Hall. The Link Environmental Awareness lecture,"New Routes for Agriculture," is free and open to the public, sponsored by the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth.

Central to Jackson's proposition -- that farming could be more productive and less destructive if it emulated natural systems -- is the notion of replacing annual crops such as corn, wheat and soybeans with perennials that would not require planting year after year. Such a system takes its cue from natural ecosystems such as wild prairies -- flexible and resilient systems that maintain their health without soil erosion, without chemical fertilizers or insecticides, and with little fossil fuel input.

Modern annual crops, by contrast, deplete topsoil faster than it can be created. "One-half of our topsoil is gone 200 years after opening this country to agriculture," Jackson says. The tall grasses that grow on prairies have deep root systems that hold topsoil, retain water and eventually decompose into organic matter, replenishing -- not depleting -- the fertility of the soil.

In addition, the deep gene pool of a natural prairie could adapt to climate changes and the invasions of insects or microbes far better than traditional wheat fields.

Fifteen years ago, Wes Jackson and his wife, Dana, founded The Land Institute, a 278-acre research and education center in Salina, Kansas, that studies sustainable alternatives in agriculture, energy, waste management and shelter. Experiments at the Land Institute have already shown that mixed fields can outproduce single crops under some conditions, and a report in the journal Science last fall concluded Jackson's Land Institute had demonstrated proof-in-principle of its founding concept.

Jackson's visionary ideas prompted Life magazine to name him among 100 important Americans of the 20th century. He has also been honored as a MacArthur Fellow and Pew Conservation Fellow.

Jackson, who was born in 1936 on a farm near Topeka, Kansas, received his bachelor's degree (biology) from Kansas Wesleyan University, his master's degree (botany) from the University of Kansas and his doctorate (genetics) from North Carolina State University. He was a professor of biology at Kansas Wesleyan and later established the Environmental Studies Program at California State University, Sacramento, where he became a tenured full professor. He resigned in 1976 to devote his full efforts to research on renewable agricultural systems and the communities they sustain.

Jackson's writings include both papers and books. His recent work, Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place, co-edited with William Vitek, was released by Yale University Press in 1996. Becoming Native to This Place (1994) sketches his vision for the resettlement of America's rural communities. New Roots for Agriculture , published in 1980, outlines the basis for agricultural research at The Land Institute.