Wes Jackson and the Land Institute

On Monday, Phileena Heuertz, Daniel Lawse and I were able to travel to Salina, KS to meet with Wes Jackson. Wes Jackson founded the Land Institute in 1976 to revolutionize crop production. He realized the academic institutions he studied and taught in, were part of the problem for long-term soil erosion.

Academia was concerned with greater food output and was happy to throw ever greater amounts of petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides on crops but which in the long term, reduced a soil's fertility. It led to soil erosion, demolished root systems, and depleted the soil of natural resources.

Since that time, Wes Jackson has been consumed with converting the world's plant life back from the monocultures of today (almost all arable land is devoted to production of corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, etc.), and increasing biodiversity. Interestingly, he is also hoping to cross-bread these crops so that these crops go from being annuals to perennials. By cross-breeding over many (50+) years, they hope to breed a hybrid that produces crops but is a perennial.

For instance, wheat might be bred with a particular grass that is a genetic cousin of wheat. That offspring would be bred again with a similar offspring or even a parent like wheat again. Over enough time, they could produce a grass-like wheat crop that would keep producing food.

Instead of tilling the soil each year and replanting, Wes believes they could get 7-8 years of crops from a hybrid perennial crop. This would eliminate much of the soil erosion because the root systems would stay in the ground. Root systems of some of these early hybrid plants have been 3 feet deep.

Wes is 72 and was working on a 50 year land bill to present to Obama and McCain when we arrived. He gave this task to someone else and talked with us for 4 hours. We received a tour of the Institute and also a history lesson, philosophy, genetics, etc. lesson.

He was gracious to answer our questions and even used some visual aids in his yard to help make a particular point. He invited us into his house and poured us some water. He showed us a small cabin of Leland, a friend of his, that I may mention in a future post. The cabin doesn't have much more than a small bed, a small nightstand, a wood stove, and a bucket that he could pull from underground for his "refrigerated items". Leland passed away 3 years ago.

Being an introvert, I thought I would be overwhelmed. I wasn't. Phileena, Daniel and I talked all 8 hours (4 hours there and 4 hours back) and we were in conversation 4 hours with Wes. It was one of the best days...great company and a fantastic time with Wes Jackson. I can count on two hands the number of speeches/sermons/lessons I've heard that were better. Thank you Wes Jackson (and Phileena for all her work setting up this trip and introducing us to him; she had met him while on her sabbatical at Duke. He was giving a convocation with Wendell Berry).