Land Institute

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The Land Institute is a non-profit research, education, and policy organization dedicated to sustainable agriculture based in Kansas, United States

Their goal is to develop an agricultural system based on perennial crops that "has the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops".

The institute, based in Salina, Kansas, was founded in 1976 by plant geneticist and MacArthur "genius grant" recipient Wes Jackson and Dana Jackson (who has long worked with the Land Stewardship Project in Minnesota). Wes Jackson has been the guiding figure at The Land Institute, but he has also been fortunate to have the assistance of leading figures in their fields including photographer Terry Evans, and historians Brian Donahue, Donald Worster, and Angus Wright.

Perennial polyculture systems may have a variety of benefits over conventional annual monocultures such as increased biodiversity, reduced soil erosion, and reduced inputs on fossil fuels, fertilizers, and pesticides [1].

Using gains made in scientific knowledge and ability over the past few decades, Land Institute scientists are breeding the annual crop plants wheat, sorghum and sunflower with wild, perennial relatives, thus creating perennial wheat, perennial sorghum and perennial sunflower. They also are working to domesticate productive perennials, including the high-protein Illinois bundleflower. Since each recombination of traits and selection takes a plant generation, to achieve productive and genetically stable perennial crop plants for use by farmers is expected to take several decades.

In addition to promoting a "natural systems agriculture," The Land Institute is an advocate for rural community. It sees the former helping the latter, with less reliance on industrial supplies and more value on farmers knowing fields' individual characteristics.

The work of The Land Institute was featured in Michael Pollan's New York Times best-seller The Omnivore's Dilemma. The general modus operandi of developing a sustainable, high yield, low labor, agricultural model based on the culturation of crop polycultures, developed by The Land Institute forms the substance of the chapter: How Will We Feed Ourselves? in Janine Benyus's book, Biomimicry - Innovation Inspired by Nature (Inside the revolutionary new science that is rediscovering life's best ideas - and changing the world). (1997). (ISBN 0-06-053322-6).

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