Dear supporters,

We are only briefly not soil.

What will we do with our time on this planet, a human lifetime, just a blip in the vast timescale of the prairie? At The Land Institute, we inhabit radical friction: the audacity to believe we can change the trajectory of agriculture and the practicality to do the rigorous research, season after season, that makes it possible.

This fall, nearly a thousand of you gathered on the land for our 50th anniversary at Prairie Festival, and more than three thousand joined us online. We honored our founders, Dana Jackson and Wes Jackson. We shared stories and made art and music and tasted the grains of a different agricultural future. And I was reminded that we are not only working toward a perennial future. We are living it, together.

Fifty years ago, perennial grain agriculture was an audacious idea. Today, we have proven it is possible. Wes believed perennials must become the predominant form of agriculture by the time The Land Institute turns 100. The next four years will decide whether we get there.

By 2030, we will:

• Speed the breeding. Through the Perennial Genome Initiative, we will build shared genomic tools so breeders around the world can identify promising plants faster, and perennial grains reach farmers’ fields sooner.
• Scale the effort. With global collaborators, we will build a blueprint that identifies which perennial crops belong in which landscapes and with which partners, mapping the path from research plots to millions of acres.
• Accelerate the movement. We will connect place-based hubs across six continents into a global learning network of scientists, farmers, artists, entrepreneurs, and communities, so a breakthrough in one place moves the whole movement forward.

If we succeed, by 2030 perennial grain agriculture will no longer be a question of whether. It will be a question of where and how fast. That is the leap from proving it can be done to making it happen, and it will set the foundation for the next 50 years at The Land Institute.

Perennial agriculture requires perennial investment. I’m asking you to make a year-end gift to help make this leap possible.

DONATE TODAY

Before long, we will all become history. But what we do with this next blip will shape the world for millennia to come. Thank you for choosing to spend part of yours with us.

Perennially,