Agriculture will survive only if producers grow more perennial crops, says an American leader in sustainable agriculture.
Wes Jackson, president of the Land Institute in Kansas, said agriculture’s destructive habits began 10,000 years ago and continue today with the economic crutch of oil and gas. Without oil and gas, modern agriculture could not sustain itself, he added.
With 6.5 billion people in the world, agricultural reserves are running on empty, Jackson said during a recent lecture at the University of Alberta.
“We’re at a point, we land animals will have to start living within our means and bring ecology and evolutionary biology front and centre as the organizational paradigm of how we’re going to continue to live on the land without heavy infusion of fossil carbon.”
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Jackson said agriculture must return to more traditional ecosystems such as perennial crops within a diverse environment to stop it being so reliant on oil and gas.
The Land Institute is developing perennial wheat, sorghum, sunflower and corn crops to limit the dependence on oil and gas for fertilizer and fuel used to plant annual crops.
“If we are to bring the process of the wild to the farm, then we’re going to need to perennialize the major crops,” Jackson said.
It will take at least eight to 12 years before perennial wheat is available for production. Crops such as sorghum and sunflower are 25 to 30 years away from moving to a perennial state and it will take at least 50 years before corn becomes a perennial.
“This is where the healing process begins with agriculture.”
Jackson said agriculture is more destructive than forestry and ranching because of its annual cropping practices, which are more dependent on oil and gas and have a greater tendency to cause soil erosion because of their shallow root system.
Jackson said although there is a trend toward minimum tillage and zero tillage practices, they are dependent on chemicals to control the weeds.
“They’re better than losing the soil. The half life of those alien chemicals is better than the half life of renewing soil.”
He said the change required to move from annual to perennial crops that can sustain themselves is similar to the shift in thinking that was needed by the astronomer Copernicus, who changed the belief that the earth was the centre of the universe. A similar kind of shift in thinking is needed to keep agriculture sustainable, he added.
As part of his work at the Land Institute, Jackson is writing a 50-year American farm bill with a goal to slowly change the percentage of arable land devoted to traditional agriculture to perennial-based agriculture.
“We’re advocating the five-year farm bills be mile posts and every five years have an increase in the amount of land that is perennialized, have more perennials in the rotation,” he said.
While the idea for turning more annual crops into perennials is new, it has attracted a lot of attention, he said.
“People are beginning to catch on and with climate change looming, the perennials will be far more resilient to climate change.”
