"This past week in San Francisco, food writers and environmentalists gathered to taste some breakfast cereal.
This particular cereal had an ingredient — the milled seeds of a little-known plant called Kernza — that's the result of a radical campaign to reinvent agriculture and reverse an environmentally disastrous choice made by our distant ancestors.
The campaign began 40-some years ago with a scientist-environmentalist named Wes Jackson. He argued that humanity took a wrong turn, thousands of years ago, when it came to rely on crops like wheat and rice for basic sustenance. These "annual" crops need replanting each year, "which means that if you're going to get your seed to germinate, you've got to destroy the vegetation at the surface," clearing away anything that might compete with the fragile seedlings, Jackson said.
As farmers use tillage tools or herbicides to get rid of competing vegetation, they inevitably wipe away habitat for birds and insects. Bare soil washes away and pollutes streams and rivers. Tilling the soil releases vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Jackson imagined a totally different style of farming. And he founded a small organization called The Land Institute, in Salina, Kan., to pursue the dream.
Tim Crews, the institute's director of research, takes me on a little tour of the grounds at The Land Institute, and our first stop is a patch of native prairie. Crews gesture toward the carpet of grass, wildflowers and clover. "This is the vegetation that actually builds soil. It's what created the rich soils that feed us, across the breadbasket of the Midwest," he says.
These plants don't require reseeding. Their roots go deep into the earth, live right through the winter, and send up fresh green stems every spring.
The Land Institute believes that we should be getting our staple foods from perennial plants like this. And they're feeling pretty excited at the Land Institute these days. They actually have some examples of grain from perennial plants to show off."
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/04/13/711144729/can-this-breakfast-cereal-help-save-the-planet
This particular cereal had an ingredient — the milled seeds of a little-known plant called Kernza — that's the result of a radical campaign to reinvent agriculture and reverse an environmentally disastrous choice made by our distant ancestors.
The campaign began 40-some years ago with a scientist-environmentalist named Wes Jackson. He argued that humanity took a wrong turn, thousands of years ago, when it came to rely on crops like wheat and rice for basic sustenance. These "annual" crops need replanting each year, "which means that if you're going to get your seed to germinate, you've got to destroy the vegetation at the surface," clearing away anything that might compete with the fragile seedlings, Jackson said.
As farmers use tillage tools or herbicides to get rid of competing vegetation, they inevitably wipe away habitat for birds and insects. Bare soil washes away and pollutes streams and rivers. Tilling the soil releases vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Jackson imagined a totally different style of farming. And he founded a small organization called The Land Institute, in Salina, Kan., to pursue the dream.
Tim Crews, the institute's director of research, takes me on a little tour of the grounds at The Land Institute, and our first stop is a patch of native prairie. Crews gesture toward the carpet of grass, wildflowers and clover. "This is the vegetation that actually builds soil. It's what created the rich soils that feed us, across the breadbasket of the Midwest," he says.
These plants don't require reseeding. Their roots go deep into the earth, live right through the winter, and send up fresh green stems every spring.
The Land Institute believes that we should be getting our staple foods from perennial plants like this. And they're feeling pretty excited at the Land Institute these days. They actually have some examples of grain from perennial plants to show off."
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/04/13/711144729/can-this-breakfast-cereal-help-save-the-planet