Prairie Festival History

The first Prairie Festival, titled Prairie Roots/Human Roots, was held on the ranch of artist Terry Evans and her husband Sam near Salina, Kansas. The event’s goal was to explore the holistic context in which The Land Institute operates, transcending a purely academic discussion to include art, poetry, advocacy, philosophy, and culture, which was largely inspired and organized by co-founder Dana Jackson.

David Brower of Friends of the Earth spoke, then Kansas Governor John Carlin discussed energy, Terry Evans showed a prairie photo exhibit, poets Harley Elliot and Stephen Hind gave readings, and a potluck picnic was had by all, among many other festivities. “The Wholeness of Life and Things” in this Fall 1979 issue of the Land Report tells the story.

The construction of the “big barn” was completed near The Land Institute’s office. Land Institute interns and co-founder Wes Jackson used salvaged and recycled materials to build the barn, which was used to store machinery, dry seeds from the rafters, and store hay. This location would later serve as a central gathering space for Prairie Festival activities, including keynote speakers and the fan-favorite barn dance, for decades to come. Over the years, this building has hosted experiences that inspire, invite, and unite those whose lives are touched by the perennial nature of this place and our scientific work.

Prairie Festival 1986 held the first-ever barn dance in the “big barn.” Since then, the barn dance has become a staple on Friday evening during opening night. The barn dance has since become one of many musical elements incorporated into Prairie Festival and is a defining feature that sets the event apart from traditional academic or scientific gatherings.

The 10th Annual Prairie Festival recognized the value of inviting and retaining historic knowledge from prior staff, interns, and familiar faces in The Land Institute’s community. To quote the Summer 1988 Land Report, “former interns and students surfaced and introduced themselves. The stories about their terms here and experiences since they left added to [our] understanding of The Land Institute.” Prairie Festival 2026 seeks to accomplish a similar goal, where long-time advocates of perennial agriculture can exchange knowledge with those new to our movement, whom we invite to join us this September.

In the 1995 edition of The Land Report, Land Institute interns noted takeaways from the year’s Prairie Festival themes, including the presence of global attendance and insights, the need to utilize “whole science” in our research by incorporating both scientific knowledge and traditional ways of knowing, and more. 

As stated by former intern David Tepfer, “There is knowing in a scientific way, which gets the most trust in our society. There is also knowing in a more intuitive, experiential manner, which generally gets less credence. Both ways of knowing are key to a desirable future.”

The Land Institute purchased the Wauhob Prairie adjacent to our campus after previously pursuing a 50-year lease of the prairie in 1986. Not only has this land served as an engaging site for educational tours, Prairie Festival prairie walks, and immersion in nature, but its ecological makeup also provides the foundational context for our mission to develop diverse perennial crops that allow agriculture to function like native ecosystems. 

The Land Institute celebrated its 25th anniversary at Prairie Festival 2001, the halfway point between the founding of our organization and the present day. With Prairie Festival 2026 designed to reflect on our past 50 years of progress and envision the next 50 years of innovation, Prairie Festival 2001 also leaned into a contemplative lens.

As mentioned in the Fall 2001 Land Report, “The Prairie Festival this year had things that others did not. It had 25 years of The Land Institute to look back on—and to build on.” Co-founder Wes Jackson would also give a similar speech at the 2012 Prairie Festival, which was titled “35 Years: A Past and Beyond, the Future and Beyond.”

The Land Institute unveiled its new research building to the public during Prairie Festival 2010. This building now holds space for research labs, staff offices, gathering space for research seminars with staff and research collaborators, and more. The walls of this building are packed with recent research papers from Land Institute staff and partners, remnants of whiteboard brainstorming sessions, and even a plaque commemorating the partnership between Yunnan University, the University of Illinois, and The Land Institute to develop perennial rice.

In 2012, the New York Times published an article framing Prairie Festival, The Land Institute’s campus, and the event community as a “Mecca for those whose passions run to sustainability, farming, and feeding the world.” This article highlighted the 34th iteration of Prairie Festival, calling it an “intellectual hootenanny where ideas collide with music, art, food, like bison chili, and bread and beer made from Kernza,” capturing the event’s unique, immersive, and eclectic nature. 

The Land Institute bused our event community to our breeding research plots as part of Prairie Festival programming to showcase plant-breeding goals and field research in real time. To this day, these plot tours remain a central activity at Prairie Festival, and they will be featured again at Prairie Festival 2026 to showcase how far we’ve come since this activity first appeared in our event program in the early 2000s. 

The Sunflower State’s very own Kansas! Magazine advertised Prairie Festival 2019 as a unique opportunity for attendees from all walks of life to join conversations around climate, sustainability, and land through the lens of music, art, and science. This reinforced Prairie Festival as one of the most unique gatherings of its kind. The 2019 festival featured author Bill McKibben, soil ecologist and current research partner M. Francesca Cotrufo, author and cultural geographer Carolyn Finney, physicist Amory Lovins, conservation biologist Ana Luz Porzecanski, artist Rena Detrixhe, and Grammy-nominated musician Eliza Gilkyson. 

Photo credit: Kansas! Magazine

In her opening remarks at Prairie Festival 2022, The Land Institute’s President, Rachel Stroer, ends by acknowledging the simultaneously local and global nature of our work, with collaborators advancing this work in near and far locations such as Kansas, Missouri, Palestine, Argentina, and more. Organizational and community partners have been invaluable collaborators on this event and our work since The Land Institute was founded in 1976. This spirit will define the next 50 years of progress at The Land Institute, where we will ignite a global movement to establish diverse perennial crops as a new agricultural paradigm.