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The Land Institute is a non-profit research, education, and policy organization dedicated to sustainable agriculture based in Salina, 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".^[1]

Harvesting a Thinopyrum intermedium breeding nursery at The Land Institute

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 of irrigation, fossil fuels, fertilizers, and pesticides.^[2]

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: A Natural History of Four Meals. 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.^[3]

See also[link]

	Sustainable development portal
	Environment portal
	Ecology portal
	Earth_sciences portal
	Energy portal

• The Earth Institute

References[link]

External links[link]

Media related to The Land Institute at Wikimedia Commons

• The Land Institute website
• Smithsonian magazine profile of Jackson
• 1986 interview with In Context
• Kansas State Historical Society page on Land Institute and its archives

Coordinates: 38°46′08″N 97°33′08″W / 38.76889°N 97.55222°W / 38.76889; -97.55222

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The Land may refer to:

• The Land, the setting for novels by Stephen R. Donaldson, in the The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever universe
• The Land, primary setting for the novels by Robert J. Sawyer, in the Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy
• The Land (Mildred D. Taylor), a novel by Mildred D. Taylor
• The Land (1942 film), a documentary film directed by Robert J. Flaherty
• The Land (1969 film), a 1969 Egyptian film
• The Land (1974 film), a 1974 South Korean film
• The Land (song), a protest song, traditionally sung by the Georgist movement in pursuit and promotion of land value taxation
• The Land (Epcot), a pavilion at Walt Disney World's Epcot theme park
• Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper whose name means "The Land" (as in the Land of Israel)
• The Land, the Michigan Women's Music Festival women-only venue
• The Land, a long narrative poem by Vita Sackville-West
• The Land, a rural newspaper in Australia owned by Rural Press
• The Land (magazine), a Minnesota farm and rural life newspaper owned by CNHI

See also[link]

• Land (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Wes Jackson
Wes Jackson
Born	(1936-01-01) 1 January 1936 (age 76) Topeka, Kansas
Residence	USA
Citizenship	USA
Nationality	American
Fields	Agronomy Agriculture Genetics
Institutions	The Land Institute California State University Sacramento
Alma mater	Kansas Wesleyan University University of Kansas North Carolina State University
Notable awards	Pew Conservation Scholar (1990) MacArthur Fellow (1992) Right Livelihood Award

Wes Jackson (born 1936) is the founder and current president of The Land Institute. He is also a member of the World Future Council.

Early life and education[link]

Jackson was born and raised on a farm near Topeka, Kansas. After earning a BA in biology from Kansas Wesleyan University, an MA in botany from the University of Kansas, and a PhD in genetics from North Carolina State University, Wes Jackson established and served as chair of one of the United States' first environmental studies programs at California State University, Sacramento.

Jackson then chose to leave academia, returning to his native Kansas, where he founded a non-profit organization, The Land Institute, in 1976. He still heads The Land Institute, which currently describes its main goal as the development of "Natural Systems Agriculture"; it also publishes The Land Report, a newsletter about American sustainable agriculture and agrarianism.

Work with The Land Institute[link]

The Land Institute explored alternatives in appropriate technology, environmental ethics, and education, but a research program in sustainable agriculture eventually became central to its work. In 1978 Jackson proposed the development of a perennial polyculture. He sought to have fields planted in polycultures, more than one plant in a field, as in nature.

Jackson also wanted to use perennials, which would not need to be replanted every year - leaving soil more intact, preventing erosion, and allowing important relationships between soil and plant to continue. The Land Institute attempts to breed plants not presently used in agriculture into effective producers of perennial grains in intercropping conditions. Jackson argued that this version of agriculture used "nature as model", and to pursue that end The Land Institute has studied prairie ecology.

Current and future work[link]

Entering its third decade, The Land Institute is beginning to demonstrate progress in developing the perennial crops called for in the Natural Systems Agriculture model. Programs in wheat, sorghum, and sunflower are generating crop lines displaying both perenniality and agriculturally-significant seed yield.

Research on integrating these new plants into polycultures also continues. The Land Institute is not itself developing machinery suitable for one-pass harvesting of grain polycultures. It instead takes the position that integration of existing materials separation technology into harvesters is a straightforward task, and will be accomplished by public and private agricultural engineers when the demand arrives.

Author[link]

Wes Jackson is the author of several books and is recognized as a leader in the international sustainable agriculture movement. In 1971, Wes Jackson's first efforts to address growing environmental concerns, react to social concerns growing from the Civil Rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, and answer student requests for more relevant materials resulted in the environmental reader, Man and the Environment.^[1][2] After leaving academia and establishing the Land Institute, Jackson published New Roots for Agriculture, partially in reaction to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office on soil erosion.^[1][3]

This book expanded on ideas presented in an 1978 article, "Towards a Sustainable Agriculture," ^[1][4] about looking to natural ecosystems, such as the prairie, to help solve the problem of soil erosion. He collaborated with author Wendell Berry, with whom Jackson has shared a longtime friendship and correspondence, on "Meeting the Expectations of the Land," in response to a Council on Agricultural Science and Technology report on agrochemicals.^[1][5]

Jackson's Becoming Native to This Place, published in 1994, challenges readers to develop a relationship with their ecosystems and further develops the idea Natural Systems Agriculture. He was a 1990 Pew Conservation Scholar, in 1992 became a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2000 received the Right Livelihood Award. His work is often referred to by author Wendell Berry, with whom Jackson has shared a longtime friendship and correspondence.^[6]

Works[link]

Selected Bibliography

Primary Author:

• Man and the Environment (1971)
• New Roots for Agriculture (1980)
• Altars of Unhewn Stone: Science and the Earth (1987)
• Becoming Native to This Place (1994)
• Nature as Measure: The Selected Essays of Wes Jackson (2011)
• Consulting the Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture (2011)

Contributor:

• Meeting the Expectations of the Land: Essays in Sustainable Agriculture and Stewardship (1984), Editor
• Soil and Survival: Land Stewardship and the Future of American Agriculture (1986), Introduction by
• From the Land: Articles Compiled from the Land 1941-1954 (1988), Introduction by
• Farming in Nature's Image: An Ecological Approach to Agriculture (1991), Forward by
• Life on the Dry Line: Working the Land, 1902-1944 (1992), Forward by
• From the Good Earth: A Celebration of Growing Food Around the World (1993), Forward by
• The Ecology of Hope: Communities Collaborate for Sustainability (1996), Forward by
• Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle (1999), Forward by
• Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town (1999), Forward by
• The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge (2008), Editor
• Wendell Berry: Life and Work (2007), Essay

Quotes[link]

• “If we don’t get sustainability in agriculture first, sustainability will not happen.”^[7]
• “By beginning to make agriculture sustainable we will have taken the first step forward for humanity to begin to measure progress by its independence from the extractive economy.”^[8]
• “Ecosystem agriculturalists will take advantage of huge chunks of what works. They will be taking advantage of the natural integrities of ecosystems worked out over the millennia.”^[9]
• "If your life's work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you're not thinking big enough."^[10]

See also[link]

• Agrarianism
• Local food
• No-till farming
• Polyculture
• Sustainable agriculture
• Yoshikazu Kawaguchi

Notes and references[link]

External links[link]

• The Land Institute
• World Future Council
• 35 Who Made a Difference: Wes Jackson
• Wes Jackson
• Robert Jensen: An Interview with Wes Jackson
• Right Livelihood Award recipient Wes Jackson
• Kansas State Historical Society's entry on Land Institute archives, including a history