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Land Report the Land Institute ∙ Spring 2012 the Land Institute LAND REPORT THE LAND INSTITUTE ∙ SPRING 2012 THE LAND INSTITUTE MISSION STATEMENT DIRECTORS When people, land and community are as one, all three members Anne Simpson Byrne prosper; when they relate not as members but as competing inter- Vivian Donnelley Terry Evans ests, all three are exploited. By consulting nature as the source and Pete Ferrell measure of that membership, The Land Institute seeks to develop an Jan Flora agriculture that will save soil from being lost or poisoned, while pro- Wes Jackson moting a community life at once prosperous and enduring. Patrick McLarney Conn Nugent Victoria Ranney OUR WORK Lloyd Schermer Thousands of new perennial grain plants live year-round at The Land John Simpson Institute, prototypes we developed in pursuit of a new agriculture Donald Worster that mimics natural ecosystems. Grown in polycultures, perennial Angus Wright crops require less fertilizer, herbicide and pesticide. Their root sys- tems are massive. They manage water better, exchange nutrients more STAFF e∞ciently and hold soil against the erosion of water and wind. This Scott Bontz strengthens the plants’ resilience to weather extremes, and restores Carrie Carpenter Marty Christians the soil’s capacity to hold carbon. Our aim is to make conservation a Sheila Cox consequence, not a casualty, of agricultural production. Stan Cox Lee DeHaan LAND REPORT Ti≠any Durr Adam Gorrell Land Report is published three times a year. issn 1093-1171. The edi- Stephanie Hutchinson tor is Scott Bontz. To use material from the magazine, reach him at Wes Jackson [email protected], or the address or phone number below. Patricia Johnson Ron Kinkelaar ELECTRONIC MEDIA Glenn Laubhan John Mai To receive Scoop, e-mail news about The Land Institute, write to Grant Mallett Carrie Carpenter at [email protected], or call. Our Web site Jayne Norlin is landinstitute.org. Bob Pinkall Steve Renich John Schmidt SUPPORT Duane Schrag To help The Land Institute, see the contribution form on the back Scott Seirer cover, or contribute online at landinstitute.org. Funders receive the Freddie Smith Land Report. David Van Tassel Cindy Thompson Shuwen Wang TO REACH US Darlene Wolf The Land Institute 2440 E. Water Well Road, Salina, KS 67401 phone 785-823-5376 fax 785-823-8728 [email protected] CONTENTS land report 102, spring 2012 4 The Next Step Scott Bontz 21 Bedfellows and Communities Wes Jackson, Stan Cox, and Tim Crews 22 Ecosystem Gardening Scott Bontz 25 Prairie Festival recordings 26 At the Land 27 Thanks to our contributors 31 The Writers and Artists 32 Donation form Cover: Players in the history of biology. For the story, see page 4. From left to right, top to bottom: Francis Galton, DNA and its X-ray photographer Rosalind Franklin, Charles Darwin, Hugo de Vries, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Francis Crick, Darwin’s Galapagos finches, Ronald Fisher, a fruit fly that helped to solve the mystery of genetics, Charles Lyell, Marshall Nirenberg, Alexander von Humboldt, garden peas that opened the field of genetics, James Watson, skeleton of a mammoth, Georges Cuvier, Oswald Avery, Gregor Mendel, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Thomas Morgan, peppered moths before and after industrialization, and Sewall Wright. Contents photo: Beetle and Silphium integrifolium, by Scott Bontz. THE NEXT STEP scott bontz 4 TrevallyLAND off REPORT of Costa Rica. They can hunt singly, but are more successful together. This observation comes from scientists, who reach world-changing effects through shared accumulation of their findings. Jason Buchheim photo. n the essay “Societies as Organisms,” ity; they mysteriously gather to a critical Lewis Thomas tells how social insects mass for action. They consult accumulated such as bees behave like “the most knowledge in their genes. Thomas compares social of all social animals,” the one this to scientific papers. In the journals of Iwith the strongest attachments to kind, scientific societies, fragmentary and usually Homo sapiens. Some people aren’t comfortable modest findings of workers in lab and field with that comparison. Thousands of insects accumulate, collate, correct, and build. John swarming to act as one, larger creature M. Ziman says this has been “the secret of seems alien. But ants farm fungi. Ants raise Western science since the 17th century, for it aphids as livestock. Termites “throw up achieves a corporate, collective power that is columns and beautiful, curving, symmetri- far greater than one individual can exert.” cal arches.” Each hive and colony works For the sciences of evolutionary biol- as a society. None turns to central author- ogy and ecology, that encyclopedia grows Trevally off of Costa Rica. They can hunt singly, but are more successful together. This observation comes from scientists, who reach world-changing effects through shared accumulation of their findings. Jason Buchheim photo. THE LAND INSTITUTE 5 large but usually toward only more Charles Darwin pulls exploration. Scientists at The Land Institute 1 together geology, ecology, say now has come a critical moment for the amalgam’s wholesale, holistic applica- and biology to recognize all tion. They call this the “fourth synthesis,” life as related, and a result of after Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, never-ending competition. then the theory’s melding with the science of inheritance, and eventually the cracking “It is difficult for a modern person to ap- of life’s genetic code. They mean making preciate the unity of science and Christian agriculture work more like a natural culture religion that existed at the time of the and economy, with grain crops that are pe- Renaissance and far into the 18th century,” rennials growing in mixtures, as does most the German-American scientist Ernst natural vegetation, to save the soil and nu- Mayr wrote in “The Growth of Biological trients that farming has lost from the start Thought.” Nature’s apparent harmony and but finally can’t live without. purpose served as convincing proof of God. The scientists have been at it for three “The science of the day” was natural theol- decades. What they seek is a radical change ogy. Galileo thought that a god who governs from the annual monocultures that make the world with eternal laws inspires trust most of humanity’s food. To ready their and faith at least as much as one who forev- crops and figure how to grow them may take er intervenes, Mayr said, and this idea gave three decades more. Meanwhile, population rise to the birth of science as we know it. grows and soil erodes. Recently Britain’s Mechanistic laws fit reasonably well Royal Society, the US National Research the physical model of spheres revolving Council, and even the US Agriculture across the heavens. But life was something Department have come to see the need and else. The diversity of form and action among voice support for perennial grains. The Land plants and animals didn’t fit limited ba- Institute now proposes a 30-year, $1.64 bil- sic rules. “Everything in the living world lion effort enlisting more than160 scientists seemed to be so unpredictable, so special, on five continents. For comparison: federal and so unique that the observing naturalist ethanol subsidies reached that figure in four found it necessary to invoke the creator, his months. thought, and his activity in every detail of The time required is no cause for dis- the life of every individual of every kind of couragement, says Wes Jackson, president of organism,” Mayr said. This didn’t fit with The Land Institute. For an established grain conception of a ruler as someone who su- crop, breeding a new variety takes almost a pervises workers but doesn’t perform all of decade. With modern knowledge of genetics their tasks. For two centuries scientists tried and modern computing power, his scien- to resolve this dilemma. tists hope to accomplish with perennials As these searchers explained more what for annuals, in the hands of farmers things once considered inexplicable except with no labs, took millennia. And in far less by intervention or special laws from God, time than that, the worldview born of the theology and science began to conflict. And, organism of ideas has seen three big devel- Mayr said, “Nothing signaled the emancipa- opments to support the institute scientists’ tion of science from religion and philosophy plan for a fourth. more definitely than the Darwinian revolu- 6 LAND REPORT tion.” Edward J. Larson, in “Evolution: The tinct species that he read from them of “a Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory,” world previous to ours, destroyed by some wrote, “Darwin’s theory ripped through kind of catastrophe.” But though he consid- science and society, leaving little unchanged ered form so much a result of function that by its force.” With 19th century evolutionary he could infer a whole animal from one part, thinking, we became interconnected com- he could not accept that environment de- petitors rather than separate creations. termined form, and he adamantly opposed Millions of Americans still deny organic evolution. Darwin’s idea that all life forms trace from a Larson saw behind this view Cuvier’s common ancestor. Less well known is that Protestant religion and political conserva- though scientists soon accepted evolution in tism. Other traditionalists of the time also the form of a branching tree, they fought for instinctively opposed the idea that species decades about how it happened. Did muta- evolve, which would make change normal. tion suddenly create new species? Or did “It had a revolutionary taint,” Larson said. new organisms appear through long win- It was embraced by social radicals like nowing from variation across populations? Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, whose concept that The decisive resolution was named biology’s organisms inherit traits acquired by their “modern synthesis,” and it didn’t come until parents during life carried well into the a decade beginning in the mid-1930’s.
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