Perennial Cultures

• We apply critical concepts and qualitative approaches from across the arts, humanities, social sciences, and interdisciplinary fields like ethnobotany and geography. And we work with communities themselves. Together, we study stories of human relationships with other humans, emerging perennial grain crops, and landscapes.
  • We do this to understand cultural impacts, barriers, and opportunities and to increase social legitimacy for more just, diverse, and perennial grain agricultures.
• We use knowledge and questions from educational research, land- and place-based pedagogy, and theories and traditions of learning to design and evaluate community learning opportunities that feature diverse, perennial grain ag and culture and emphasize accessibility and inclusion.
  • We do this to grow the movement of people learning with each other and with perennial grains across cultures, geographies, and generations.
• We test, innovate, and openly share transdisciplinary research methods like civic science to help advance the intercultural development of diverse, perennial grain agroecosystems in ways that are just, caring, and ethical.
  • We do this to help researchers and communities collaboratively develop a global network of local and regional hubs that create a perennial future.

In 2015, Wes Jackson and Bill Vitek convened a conference about how the invention of perennial grain crops grown in mixtures creates the possibility for new ways of thinking and making a living within the ecosphere. From then through 2022, The Land Institute’s Ecosphere Studies program, led by Aubrey Streit Krug, designed events and experiments to bring together researchers, teachers, students, and community members to co-produce and test ecospheric approaches to learning. In 2023, to better integrate and structure the insights gained so far through this learning process, Ecosphere Studies evolved into the Perennial Cultures Lab and the Ecosphere Fellows program.

In the near term, we are working to:

• Build and share knowledge about past and present human relationships to the plant species that will yield perennial grains
• Test and apply approaches to understand if and how people change and learn as they interact with each other to develop diverse, perennial grain agroecosystems
• Initiate and deepen intercultural land relations beginning in our home hub, grounded in the Central Great Plains
• Design and evaluate educational practices, materials, and research methods like civic science that broaden and sustain our lab’s culture of learning and The Land Institute’s organizational learning culture

Domestic

• Colorado State University, CitSci.org at the Natural Resources Ecology Lab and many civic scientists
• Grassland 2.0, including University of Wisconsin-Madison and additional institutions
• Kernza®CAP, including University of Minnesota, Green Lands Blue Waters, University of Wisconsin, and additional institutions, and collaborating high school and college and university teachers and graduate students
• New Perennials at Middlebury College
• New Roots for Restoration Biology Integration Institute, including Chicago Botanic Garden, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Missouri Botanical Garden, Saint Louis Science Center, Saint Louis University, University of Kansas, University of Missouri, and University of Vermont
• University of Kansas, Environmental Studies Program and Indigenous Studies Program
• University of Minnesota, Forever Green Initiative and Forever Green Partnership

Global

• Makaneyyat research collective, Palestine
• NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Norway

Aubrey Streit Krug presents a series of six experiential learning videos, called Perennial Practice, which introduce The Land Institute’s work, invite us to observe the world more closely, and help us reflect on our outlook and choices.

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The Land Institute’s staff and collaborators share foundational knowledge and perennial inquiry in an open-access educational collection. The Perennial Turn: Contemporary Essays from the Field, edited by Bill Vitek, includes a dozen essays by scholars, activists, and artists including Wes Jackson, Aubrey Streit Krug, Stan Cox, Terry Evans, and Rena Detrixhe, who focus on the interaction between people, societies, and the larger living world.

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