A Perennial Revolution of Agriculture – Is It Desirable, Possible, Imminent?
Date: Tuesday, July 6, 2021
Time:
Location: This will be a webinar hosted via Zoom. Register to join.
About 87% of the world’s harvested area is cultivated with annual crops, mainly grains, that must be resown every year/season. As continued climate change is rendering our existing cultivars increasingly vulnerable to stress, a shift to perennial grain crops would turn cropping into a carbon sink for decades, would likely reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as nitrous oxide, and would significantly reduce erosion and nutrient leakage. Perennial crops also have the potential to drastically reduce the costs of farming by cutting the need for external inputs (seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, energy, and labor) and hence generate social and economic advantages particularly to farmers and rural societies.
As a side event associated with the UN Food Systems Summit 2021, The Land Institute (USA) in collaboration with Birzeit University (Palestine), Lund University (Sweden), Yunnan University (China), and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sweden), will be hosting a conversation about the potential of perennial agriculture. Join this webinar to learn more about the development and benefits of new perennial grain crops and perennial polycultures.
Program & Panelists:
8:00 Setting the scene of a perennial revolution (Lennart Olsson, Lund University)
8:10 The prospects and approaches of developing perennial grain crops (Tim Crews, TLI)
8:25 Perennial sorghum (Pheonah Nabukalu, TLI)
8:35 Perennial rice (Fengyi Hu, Yunnan University)
8:45 Perennial grain crops for temperate climates (Anna Westerbergh, Swedish U. Agricultural Sci.)
9:00 A perennial vision (Aubrey Streit Krug, TLI, Omar Tesdell, Birzeit University)
9:10 Discussion
9:30 Closing the session