With New Perennial Grain, a Step Forward for Eco-Friendly Agriculture
Some 40 years ago, Wes Jackson, a plant geneticist, founded The Land Institute on the prairie near Salina, Kansas. Concerned that modern agriculture destroyed native grasslands, he asked a question that came…
7 Sustainable Food Organizations To Donate To If You Want To Fight Climate Change
A new United Nations report warns that the world could soon face a global food crisis if key changes aren’t made. As the report described, certain agricultural practices contribute to…
Follow the Food – Why Soil is Disappearing from Farms
Follow the Food – a multimedia series by BBC Future and BBC World News – investigates how farmers, researchers and innovators are working to secure a sustainable long-term future for…
A Perennial Revolution
Since the dawn of agriculture, farmers have hit the reset button every year. That’s because most are dependent on annual crops, frequently working the soil to suppress weeds and nurture…
This New Cereal and Beer share an Ingredient–and it’s Fighting Climate Change
When Patagonia decided to go into the beer business, part of the motivation was fighting climate change: The key ingredient in its beer, a grain called Kernza, is particularly good…
Bill Gates thinks these 5 agricultural hacks can help stop climate change
Here’s a seemingly obvious quote from Bill Gates about how to sustain life on earth: “[A]t the end of the day, people have to eat.” It doesn’t take a genius…
The Shift to Perennialization in Agriculture & the Broader Culture
To maintain annual agriculture, we wipe out perennial vegetation and effectively destroy everything on the landscape in order to plant crops every year. The negative consequences of this ecological disaster…
Perennial grains could be a key weapon against climate change. But not quite yet.
As climate change climbs the chart of existential threats, soil is getting a lot of attention. Back when it supported forest or grassland, before we cleared it to grow crops,…
GMO Technology’s Role in the Future of Food Is Not What You Might Expect
Lee DeHaan is a plant geneticist at The Land Institute, where he is developing perennial wheatgrass Kernza. Thus far in his work, he has always worked with traditional plant breeding to achieve…
17 Organizations Feeding and Healing the World Through Regenerative Agriculture
Transitioning to more sustainable forms of agriculture remains critical, as many current agriculture practices have serious consequences including deforestation and soil degradation. But despite agriculture’s enormous potential to hurt the…
Meet 5 people fixing the food system
By 2050, the world’s population could hit 9 billion. That’s a lot of mouths to feed! The brightest minds in gastronomy and agriculture are working to ensure that producing all that grub…
Growing Against the Grain
The Land Institute pioneers a new paradigm that challenges our current destructive agriculture model: switching annual grain cropping to ecologically intensified perennial polycultures that mimic natural systems. By working with nature,…