Conservation in Context The Necessity and Possibility of an Agriculture Where Nature is the Measure

Across the farmlands of the world, cli- pesticides have seriously degraded yield crops that feed humanity— mate change overshadows an ecolog- this gift of good land, the best con- including rice, wheat, corn, soy- ical and cultural crisis of unequaled tiguous stretch in the world. beans, and peanuts—are annuals. scale: soil erosion, loss of wild bio- In California rich valleys and reli- With cropping of annuals (alive just diversity, poisoned land and water, able snow pack in a Mediterranean part of the year and weakly rooted salinization, nitrates, expanding dead environment lessen the problem of even then), comes more loss of pre- zones, the loss of farmers, and demise soil erosion. But there is spraying, cious soil, nutrients, and water. of rural communities. Rapid climate salinization, accumulation of toxins But the problem of agriculture is change seems certain to amplify the in the delta, and loss of farmland to about more than the annual condi- consequences, but it would be a cri- sprawl. tion. It is also about growing them in sis regardless. The same thing driv- I could continue the inventory, but the unnatural condition of vast mono- ing climate change helps drive agri- the point is each region has its own cultures. This makes harvest easy, but cultural crisis, and, until recently, problems and opportunities. So we these fields of annual monocultures helped mask it; cheap fossil fuel and must acknowledge that all success- have only one kind of root architec- the things made from it, including ful corrections will be local. And that ture, which exacerbates the problem fertilizer and pesticides. The other plays to an often-overlooked point: of wasted nutrients and water. driver is American commodity sub- the decline of fossil fuels will require The problem of agriculture is not sidies that focus on bushels per acre, a higher eyes-to-acres ratio on the a recent development. Soil erosion an industrial model that much of land. Cultural and ecological adapta- brought down civilizations long be- the world wants to imitate. Ameri- tion becomes one subject. fore the industrial and chemical era. can agriculture is guided by a heav- But looking broadly, any secretary Why the crisis now? Simply, a surge ily entrenched set of commodity sub- of agriculture should see that our in human population over the last 70 sidies, especially through various 5- first order of business is to protect years, with land lost to sprawl and the year farm bills. Export policy is the our soils from eroding because it is remainder used far more intensely. driver designed to offset our nation’s the source of most of the nutrients What is the alternative? Prudence balance of payment deficit, which in- that feed us. And if our soils are pro- requires one to first look to nature, cludes the purchase of foreign oil. tected, the water falling on them can theultimatesourceofourfoodand We need a long-term, conserving be protected and properly used on production, no matter how indepen- vision. Five-year farm bills should its trip to the atmosphere, ocean, or dent we feel we have become. If only be mileposts for, let us say, a aquifer. The secretary of agriculture we look to all of its land ecosystems 50-year journey to the end of deficit must also look at the aggregate use within the ecosphere, from alpine spending and other degradation of of our 320 million acres of cropland. meadows to rain forests, we see that our agricultural capital. Where do Eighty percentage of that land grows mixtures of perennial plants rule. An- we begin? The United States is a big annual crops. The other 20% is de- nuals are opportunists that sprout, country, and the ecological mosaic voted to perennials, such as pastures reproduce, throw seeds, and die. is daunting. There are the soils of or hay, although sometimes in a ro- Perennials hold on for the long haul, the upper Midwest, deep and rich tation with annuals such as corn or protect the soil, and manage nutri- in nutrients from the Pleistocene’s sorghum. ents and water to fine degree. In scouring ice and watered by the mois- Such an overview quickly draws this regard perennials are superior ture favorably blown from the Gulf of one’s attention to the core of what to annuals whether in polyculture or Mexico. What have we done with it? might be called “the problem of agri- monoculture. We turn to perennial Soil erosion, nitrogen fertilizer, and culture”: essentially all of the high- mixtures as nature’s way.

1376 Conservation Biology, Volume 22, No. 6, 1376–1377 C 2008 Society for Conservation Biology DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.01101.x Jackson 1377

The Land Institute’s long-standing ways. The quickest and easiest would or pathogen with a chemical diver- mission has been to perennialize sev- be to increase the number of pas- sity that requires a complex enzyme eral major crops, such as wheat, sor- tures and have fewer livestock in the system on their part to produce an ghum, and sunflowers, and domes- feedlot by phasing out subsidies for epidemic. So nature’s example can ticate a few wild perennial species production-oriented grain commodi- be referred to no matter where the to produce food like their annual ties, that industry’s lifeblood. Saving landscape. This will start what Wen- analogs. The goal is to grow them the soil and allowing water to im- dell Berry calls a “conversation with in mixtures as a natural ecosystem prove is more important than having nature,” which begins with three does, to bring as many processes of more meat or corn sugar calories than questions: What was here? What will the wild to the farm as we can, both are needed. nature require of us here? And what above and below the surface. What about California and else- will nature help us do here? Because these perennial crops will where across the mosaic where soil not begin to be ready for the farmer erosion is less serious? First, peren- Wes Jackson on any appreciable scale for another nials are still superior for manag- The Land Institute, 2440 E. Water Well Road, quarter century, we must make do by ing nutrients and water. Second, Salina, KS 67401, U.S.A., email jackson@ perennializing the landscape in other species mixtures present the insect landinstitute.org

Conservation Biology Volume 22, No. 6, 2008