No one needs a gas-guzzling, planet-killing Ford F-150. Hell, no one
really needs a Prius. Hypothetically, everyone could use mass transportation
or—even better—their own legs. But people need food. There’s no getting around that biological requirement.
The real problem is growing that food
for seven billion people.
As a part of the Anthropocene lecture series
hosted at Miami University, Wes Jackson, the founder of The Land Institute, was invited to
explain “the 10,000-year-old problem of agriculture.”
To summarize an interview of Jackson on
sustainable agriculture, he stated, “I’m not optimistic, I’m hopeful.” And that
is hope is what Jackson shared—with me, at least—by introducing the idea of
domesticating the perennial grain.
Jackson began his lecture by
pointing out how feeding a growing
human population is a problem. He identified “land use” as the second greatest
emitter of greenhouse gases, a large contributor to global climate change.
Additionally, the portion of land use devoted to agriculture emits an equal amount of greenhouse gases as that
of transportation. And here I was griping about Fords!
And that’s the point, isn’t it? All
throughout intermediate and high school, students like myself were given the
standard example of transportation as a GHG culprit. Agriculture has seemingly
flown under the radar because—let’s face it—it’s food. It’s our food; it’s our food’s food (speaking of livestock),
it’s now even the gas tank’s food.
These excuses are a problem. So
what do we do?
To remedy this “10,000-year-old
problem of agriculture” Jackson has proposed the domestication of the perennial
grain. As a botanist, Jackson developed this idea from a dichotomous key. He
realized that there is no herbaceous, perennial, seed-producing polyculture
used in current agriculture, while every other category has found a niche.
Taking advantage of this absence,
Jackson has pushed the concept of working with “efficiencies inherent within
natural integrities.” Because prairies are polycultures with high biodiversity,
they have a natural resistance to pests and disease.
The current monoculture practices
in agriculture require pounds of chemical pesticides to limit the impacts of
these fears, but a polyculture would not—the efficiency is inherent.
The goal of Jackson’s work is to
maintain useful traits such as these resistances, while breeding for higher
yields in perennial grains. The process is far from finished. Even so, it is
important to note that Mr. Jackson himself admitted, “The science alone can’t
do it.”
The need for public policy on these
matters is great, and those involved will need a constituency. That becomes the
next great battle: to instill a sense of “oughtness” in those involved in and
affected by these decisions. We need to shift the sustainability focus onto
agriculture.
Whenever I am pointed to "nature's way" for the answer, I can't help but think of all the ways we humans have managed to get out of nature's way--like avoiding disease and pestulence. I agree that the idea's Jackson presents offer another way of thinking about solutions to the problem--and highlights the role of agriculture which we generally think of as a wholesome living, even though the changes in this field have largely changed the field (and the literal field!).
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