The story is fairly complex. And it’s long.
Natural ecosystems are self-sustaining. For at least 10,000 years, humans have disrupted those systems and kept them in a continuous state of disruption in order to produce annual crops for food. That, in a nutshell, is agriculture.
But increasingly, the scale of those agricultural disruptions threatens to permanently degrade the ecosphere upon which we depend.
Humans didn’t plan this, nor do we intend harm. And certainly farmers and agricultural producers, along with food consumers, are caught together with other living communities in a food and agricultural system pushed beyond its breaking point.
We believe that it doesn’t have to be this way. The solutions will take a while, but we think more people should know why.
So, The Land Institute has partnered as a sponsor with Minute Earth to explore ways to concisely illustrate for a broad general audience some of the fundamental concepts, challenges and opportunities that inform our work.
We invite you to learn more about our work and about how these perennial polycultures are at the heart of the fundamental shift we and our partners are working toward.
If you like what you see and read, remember that The Land Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit research organization. To enable this critical work, you may donate online or contact us at 785-823-5376 to visit with our team.
Our thanks to a generous long-term Friend of the Land for supporting this project.