The Land Institute’s Soil Ecology research technician, James Bowden, braves the Kansas weather to walk us through the research focuses of the program. Working cross-functionally with all of our research programs, the Soil Ecology team at TLI looks at how diverse plantings of our perennial crops can harness ecological processes to supplant the need for commercial inputs like fertilizers and pesticides. By using models of naturally occurring plant communities, TLI researchers believe that previously unattainable levels of ecological intensification are possible with perennial polycultures.