Transforming Agriculture, Perennially
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Ecosphere Studies

Ecosphere Studies asks: if the ecological future of agriculture is to be perennial and diverse, what is required of us in social terms?

Through transdisciplinary research and collaborations, we build learning communities that help society cross the threshold into diverse, perennial grain agricultures.


Key Tenets

  • Just, caring, knowledgeable communities that accept limits may be our best hope to sustain ourselves and bring perennial crops that hold soil and work with ecosystems into production. Our motivation for developing sustainable agriculture is to ensure the longevity of such equitable communities.
  • Ecosphere Studies investigates what we need to learn and remember if we are to create good human futures, nourishing people’s minds, hearts, and bodies. We explore the richness and relevance of perenniality and diversity for human communities. We develop sociocultural research and educational projects for a perennial future.
  • We emphasize material and energetic constraints. For life to thrive in the ecosphere, we must embrace healthy limits. The ecosphere is the creative, living globe that is our home. Rather than viewing Earth as a planet composed of living and non-living parts, and people as separate from our environments, Ecosphere Studies understands human communities as nestled within ecosystems.

Prairie Festival visitors participate in a sunrise walk organized by the Ecosphere Studies team that led participants through native prairie and woodlands along with Land Institute perennial crop breeding plots.

 

Join us by supporting this work with a donation to The Land Institute!

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Project Team

Aubrey Streit Krug
Director of Perennial Cultures Lab

Wes Jackson
President Emeritus

Stan Cox
Research Fellow, Ecosphere Studies

Anna Andersson
Research Technician, Civic Science

Lydia Nicholson
Educational Design Technician

Claire Wineman
Post-Baccalaureate Researcher, Soil Ecology

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Publications

Caring for other beings – both human and more-than-human – is crucial to our ongoing…

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The classic domestication scenario for grains and fruits has been portrayed as the lucky fixation…

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