The Land Institute
is a non-profit dedicated to the production of agricultural products in a sustainable way. They closely follow natural agricultural production that I talked about in my previous post on grass-fed cows. Many conventional farms have waste and chemicals as a byproduct of their agricultural production. Manure, pesticides, soil erosion, etc.; these are just some of the various side effects of conventional farming. However, at The Land Institute, they like to say that conservation is the byproduct of their agricultural production.
The Land Institute believes that farms don’t have to sacrifice ecology in order to produce food. If nature is taken into account when planting crops, keeping in mind how the local ecosystems functioned before humans, then agriculture can produce food while protecting soils, water, and biodiversity. They think that nature provides the blueprints for what needs to be grown, using perennial crops to accumulate “ecological capital,” or improve the quality of land. But the two largest crops grown in the United States are annual crops: corn and grain. They provide the majority of calories for our citizens. However, those two crops take away “ecological capital,” they degrade the land, contribute to soil erosion, and emit greenhouse gases.
What’s an annual crop versus a perennial crop? Annual crops are those that grow from seed to plant and die out within the year. They are not as renewable as perennials and they degrade the soil and water. Perennial crops grow year after year, continually producing food. They are a much more sustainable and ecologically friendly way of farming.
As in my previous blog post, perennial crops can produce food while contributing “ecological capital.” I talked about how grazing cows naturally contributes to the soil, increases the biodiversity of the grasses, and produces more biomass. In fact, The Land Institute insists that farming in this way, perennial crops can produce more biomass year after year than conventional farming, without the need for fossil fuels, and without degrading the soil and water systems. Moreover, diverse species of crops protect against food shortages, pandemics, and overdependence on a single crop. Here are a few examples of the perennials they are working on: perennial wheat, intermediate wheatgrass, grain sorghum, Illinois Bundleflower, Sunflower, and the potential use for maize, chickpea, Eastern gamagrass, rice, millets, and flax.
So, what exactly does The Land Institute do? A variety of things. They research the viability of different perennial crops and test them to see if they can be produced on a large scale. They publish research in scientific periodicals like Bioscience and Popular Science, as well as a variety of books. And they also have educational classes for those who want to be trained in natural farming. The overall goal of The Land Institute is to create a whole new way of farming, based on ecology and sustainability. Here is their mission statement:
When people, land, and community are as one,
all three members prosper;
when they relate not as members
but as competing interests,
all three are exploited.
By consulting Nature as the source
and measure of that membership,
The Land Institute seeks to develop an agriculture
that will save soil from being lost or poisoned
while promoting a community life at once
prosperous and enduring.
