Related Report

A proposal by The Land Institute

Introduction

Long-term food security is our issue. We begin with the knowledge that essentially all of nature’s ecosystems feature perennial plants growing in species mixtures and that they build soil. Agriculture reversed that process nearly everywhere by substituting annual monocultures. As a result, ecosystem services—including soil fertility—have been degraded. Most land available for new production is of marginal quality that declines quickly. The resulting biodiversity loss gets deserved attention, soil erosion less.

What is required?
Promote systemic change

A 50-Year Farm Bill is a proposal for gradual systemic change in agriculture. Perhaps what has been missing is an available vision with scientific feasibility. Implementation will depend on endorsement by the Secretary of Agriculture, the President, Congress, nonprofit organizations, corporations, and citizens.

Plan

Enclosed are charts which illustrate changes over ten 5-year farm bill periods. Each 5- year bill, in addition to its existing programs for subsidies, food programs, etc., moves incrementally toward the 50-year goal of stopping the deficit spending of ecological capital necessary for food production. Thus, the 50-year Farm Bill becomes an instrument for increasing sustainability and food security.

In the short run, we can achieve a significant measure of success through farm policy that encourages farmers to increase the use of perennial grasses and legumes in crop rotations. But that will not be enough. Options for farmers will take a major leap when perennial grains are available. Their input costs will decline as the landscape benefits. USDA and other researchers will need policy to sustain funding. Breeding perenniality into a broad spectrum of our current grain crops will take time. Even so, prototypes have thrived for several years in Kansas. As their yields increase, they will replace their annual relatives—one in as few as 10 years.

Our project would employ the ecosystem as the standard. Once that standard is adopted, an array of technologies can become useful tools. Technology would follow, rather than lead the vision.

Cost
USDA funding

We do not seek USDA funding for The Land Institute, or The Leopold Center, or any particular organization. The Land Institute will offer to the project free germplasm and more than 30 years of experience with perennials. Its staff in this decade has greatly enhanced the diversity of crops and speed of change. We have hybrid prototypes of perennial wheat, sorghum, sunflower and other crops (see Attachment II). We are giving people small samples of flour from a perennial wheat relative we have named Kernza™. Biochemical analysis shows it to be superior to annual wheat in nutrition. People like it. We expect it to be farmer-ready in a decade.

During three decades, we have collaborated with several land grant universities and other institutions. We include them as assets. Because the change needed is systemic, we believe that USDA should take the lead. The Obama administration’s devotion to change makes our proposal now seem possible.

We propose that, over an eight-year period, federal funding would sponsor 80 plant breeders and geneticists who will develop perennial grain, legume, and oilseed crops, and 30 agricultural and ecological scientists who will develop the necessary agronomic systems. They will work on six or eight major crop species at diverse locations. Budgeting $400,000 per scientist-year for salaries and research costs would add less than $50 million annually. This is eight percent of the amount that the public and private sectors have been spending on plant breeding research alone, according to a late-1990s survey.

Reversing ecological damage

Our vision is predicated on the need to end the ecological damage to agricultural land associated with grain production—damages such as soil erosion, poisoning by pesticides, and biodiversity loss. The most cost-effective way to do so and stay fed is to perennialize the landscape.

The transition of agriculture from an extractive to a renewable economy in the foreseeable future can now be realistically imagined. Our proposal is ambitious but it is necessary and it is possible. We have little doubt that we can make the agricultural transition faster than the adjustments imposed upon us by climate change and the end of the fossil fuel era. If we can keep ourselves fed, we have a chance to solve the other problems.

Conclusions

Perennialization of the 70 percent of cropland now growing grains has potential to extend the productive life of our soils from the current tens or hundreds of years to thousands or tens of thousands. New perennial crops, like their wild relatives, seem certain to be more resilient to climate change. Without a doubt, they will increase sequestration of carbon. They will reduce the land runoff that is creating coastal dead zones and affecting fisheries, as well as saving and maintaining the quality of scarce surface and ground water. U.S. food security will improve.

Social stability and ecological sustainability resulting from secure food supplies will buy time as we are forced to confront the intersecting issues of climate, population, water and biodiversity.

Download report