The Land Report A publication of The Land Institute / Number 86 / Fall 2006 The Sunflower Why It’s a Crop, What This Costs the Land, and How We Work to Change That Contents The Land Institute Mission Statement Features When people, land and community are as one, all The Sunflower three members prosper; when they relate not as David Van Tassel members but as competing interests, all three are Why It’s a Crop, What This Costs the Land, exploited. By consulting nature as the source and and How We Work to Change That .................................4 measure of that membership, The Land Institute To Shatter, or Not to Shatter ................................................7 seeks to develop an agriculture that will save soil Production and Uses of Sunflower .......................................9 from being lost or poisoned, while promoting a A Native Gets Culture Abroad ...........................................11 community life at once prosperous and enduring. The Hybrid Ethos ...............................................................13 Why Sunflowers Follow the Sun .......................................14 Prairie Festival Land Institute Staff Land Institute Our Barn Spilleth Over ......................................................16 Ron Armstrong Board of Directors What Draws Them .............................................................18 Scott Bontz Anne Simpson Byrne Recordings .........................................................................20 Cindy Cox Strachan Donnelley Sheila Cox Terry Evans Long View, Lost Chance Stan Cox Pete Ferrell Enron courts The Land Institute.........................................21 Lee DeHaan Jan Flora Jerry Glover Wes Jackson The Dust Storm Stephanie Hutchinson Eulah Laucks (emeritus) Lois Phillips Hudson ..........................................................22 Joan Jackson Mary Laucks Wes Jackson Conn Nugent We Need and Owe Rural People Patricia Johnson Victoria Ranney They don’t just make our food and fiber Steven Lancaster Lloyd Schermer Richard Manning ...............................................................26 Glenn Laubhan John Simpson John Mai Donald Worster Where is She Now? Grant Mallett Angus Wright A former intern wins a British conservation award ...........30 Bob Pinkall Harris Rayl Steve Renich Regulars John Schmidt Tiffany Stucky At the Land ..........................................................................3 David Van Tassel Thanks to Our Contributors ...............................................27 Ken Warren The Writers and Artists ......................................................31 Darlene Wolf Donation Form ...................................................................31 2440 E. Water Well Road Salina, KS 67401 Cover: Kansas Sunflowers, by Birger Sandzen. Phone: 785-823-5376 Linoleum cut, 8⅞ by 12 inches, 1933. From Birger Fax: 785-823-8728 Sandzen Memorial Gallery. The story about how [email protected] annual sunflower became a crop, and what we’re www.landinstitute.org doing to make it a perennial, begins on page 4. ISSN 1093-1171 The Land Report is published three times a year. Editor: Scott Bontz Associate editor: Darlene Wolf The Land Report 2 At the Land Perennial Grain Breeding seeds and more slender stems—are that after cultivation ended, organic In the seed harvested from plants that thriving. These plants all came matter grew in the top 4 inches of survived last winter, we saw prog- from crosses with wheat that has 28 soil at a constant rate, one that would ress with perennial sorghum. Of 264 chromosomes—rather than the 42 in equal in 55-75 years the organic plants, 56 (21 percent) had seed that bread wheat—or were the result of matter of unplowed native prairie. looked better than any from perenni- backcrossing to wheatgrass. So, we By perennializing the major grain als of past generations. Of those 56, now know where to concentrate our crops, The Land Institute aims to 38 also had seed heads progressing efforts in making crosses this winter. restore soil to preagricultural condi- toward the compact form of conven- tions while still producing food. tional grain sorghum’s. Most of the Publications other 226 plants had wild, open heads. In the August BioScience, Land In- Presentations The following weights, in grams stitute scientists laid out our work Land Institute President Wes Jackson per thousand seed, show that we are of breeding perennial grain crops: spoke at the Ecological Society of improving the average grain size. why and how we’re doing it, and its America’s annual meeting, in Mem- ■ Average of three perennials of challenges and prospects. BioSci- phis, Tennessee, on August 10, and the previous generation: 5.7 grams. ence, the magazine of the American two days later at the Ohio Prairie ■ Average of the 56 new- Institute for Biological Sciences, Conference in Dayton, Ohio. He generation perennials that had gave the report more than nine talked about reforming agriculture to improved seed: 10 grams. pages, and an editorial in support. work more like natural ecosystems ■ A commercial sorghum hybrid: In the conclusion our scientists if it’s to be ecologically healthy. 25 grams. say that “the road leading to peren- In Salina on September 10, Jack- Eleven of the new perennials had nial grains will be long, and it may son led a discussion of An Inconve- thousand-seed weights of 12 to 13 often be rough; however, the time nient Truth, the documentary film grams, about half that of grain sor- required should be put in context. about Al Gore’s campaign to show ghum’s. Had large programs to breed peren- how humans are causing rapid global The new perennials are shorter nial grains been initiated alongside climate change. Jackson thought Gore than previous ones, but not short the Green Revolution programs of did well explaining the problem, but enough to be a mechanically har- a half-century ago, farmers might was wrong that we can cut greenhouse vested grain crop. The overall ap- well have had seed of perennial gas emissions to solve the problem pearance of the best perennial varieties in their hands today.” while keeping economic growth. For plants is probably comparable to Kendra McLauchlan’s report a sustainable economy he suggested that of forage sorghums, which are on her Land Institute graduate fel- instead the standard of resilience. typically taller and lower in grain low research was in Volume 16 Before the Kansas Department production than grain sorghum. Number 1 of the science journal of Health and Environment on Oc- We began our second round of Ecological Applications. McLauch- tober 26, Jackson argued against selection to domesticate the perennial lan, with co-authors Sarah Hobbie construction of new coal-fired intermediate wheatgrass. The 50 and Wilfred Post, measured how power plants in western Kansas. plants selected in Round 1 were mated fast levels of organic matter increase with each other to produce seed for in soil when fields of annual crops New Board Member Round 2. In October, we put 4,000 are converted to perennials plants. Lloyd G. Schermer of Aspen, resulting plants in the field. After they Soil richer in organic matter is Colorado, joined our Board of grow for two years we will harvest more fertile, and absorbs and drains Directors. He is past chairman of and measure their seed to select the water better for plants. Soon after Lee Enterprises, and worked at its plants that will make up Round 3. land is converted to annual crop- newspapers in Davenport, Iowa; After years of work to make ping, soil organic matter levels Kewanee, Illinois; and Missoula, fertile hybrids of wheat and perennial fall by about half. That it climbs Montana. Long engaged with relatives, we had enough seed to again with restoration to prairie conservation, he is an honorary put 2,000 plants in the field a year was known, but how fast was not. life member of the Smithsonian ago. Those most like wheat all died The scientists studied Midwestern National Board and member of the this summer. However, plants that fields whose return to perennial grass- boards of Aspen Institute and Aspen were closer to wheatgrass—smaller land spanned 40 years. They found Center for Environmental Studies. The Land Report 3 The Sunflower: Why It’s a Crop, What This Costs the Land, and How We Work to Change That Stories by David Van Tassel, photos by Scott Bontz n whimsical moments I think of sunflowers as the Found in squalid ditches, overgrazed patches, wallows and nobles of the crop world. Young plants assembled other “waste places” throughout North America, they make in fields perform a stately dance. Their flower buds do with what resources they can find, often growing only rotate to face east for dawn’s light, then, with quiet a couple feet tall. Stumbling upon abundant nutrients and Idignity, leaves and buds swivel in unison with the sun until moisture, these prodigals can explode to 12 feet tall, branch dusk. Crowned with gold, the man-sized heads of mature wildly and spawn hundreds of small heads, which together plants withdraw from the dance to soberly remain facing drop tens of thousands of seeds. east and devote themselves to childrearing. In their twilight The massive seed production drew Native American weeks, the grizzled heads bend low, under the weight of up gatherers to patches of sunflower growing in the wake of to 2,000 fat seeds, in exhausted dignity. floods, landslides, camps and bison stampedes. We’ll never This kingly crop’s distant sires were an unruly, profli- know exactly how they transformed this weed into a crop gate rabble that is with us still. The common annual sun- 4,000 years ago. We are not even sure if the change hap- flower is an adaptable and sometimes aggressive rascal. pened in the current Mexico or eastern United States—or At far left is a wild annual sunflower. Next to it is a crop sunflower, also an annual, bred to make lots of big seeds. The three plants at right are wild perennials. Between are the results of cross-breeding on the way to a perennial crop sunflower. The Land Report 4 The Sunflower: Why It’s a Crop, What This Costs the Land, and How We Work to Change That Stories by David Van Tassel, photos by Scott Bontz both places simultaneously.