In the first post about Restoration Nation, I asked, “How can we move restoration into the private sector?”
Today, as part IV of my Farmer in Chief series (considering Michael Pollan’s article “Farmer in Chief”), I give you the Land Institute, a nonprofit research and education organization in Salina, Kansas.
Pollan mentions the Land Institute in his article and suggest the government back research to “perennialize” agriculture, as he puts it. I like the way the Land Institute website puts it: “Our purpose is to develop an agricultural system with the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops.”
They call what they’re researching Natural Systems Agriculture, and they’ve been at it for 20 years. Pollan says it is “probably a 50-year project.”
When I think of my tiny plot of buffalograss (see Farmer in Chief III), which I doubt will ever produce much that is edible or marketable, and then I think about the Land Institute’s goals, I feel both excitement and frustration. What they’re doing is very forward-thinking, but after 20 years of research and publishing in scientific journals, they’ve just reached the point at which they’re ready to set up a research institute.
“The tendency of all natural ecosystems is to increase their ecological wealth. For instance, all prairie, left alone, recycles materials, sponsors its own fertility, runs on contemporary sunlight, and increases biodiversity. Agricultural systems tend otherwise. They erode and degrade ecological capital as they provide for human needs. We call this the ‘problem of agriculture, introduced when our ancestors made the transition to agriculture millennia ago.’ Our research results suggest that it is now possible, over the next quarter century, to solve this 10,000-year-old problem.” (From the Land Institute’s History page)
Might as well have big dreams. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Check out their website, and let me know what you think. In his article, Pollan mentions Argentina, where “farmers have traditionally employed an ingenious eight-year rotation of perennial pasture and annual crops: after five years grazing cattle on pasture (and producing the world’s best beef), farmers can then grow three years of grain without applying any fossil-fuel fertilizer.” And I think one could find many other examples from around the world in which farmers strive to balance production with natural capital. But do those farming methods lead to “conservation as a consequence of agricultural production”? That’s what the Land Institute’s History page says their methods will produce.
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As I noted last week, I’m reading The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. Here is a quote I like from “Of the Origin and Use of Money.”
“Every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society.”
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It appears they have invented a way to earn a living without producing anything. On the other hand, their methods are environmentally sound. Their efforts only give off small amounts of hot air.
LOL.
Well, they’re certainly not shy, but I’m all for what they’re doing. If they can manage to restore prairie on a large scale and in a way that produces grain for human consumption, that would be a major accomplishment.