Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is solvable on Jacob Weisberg. People often vacation
Speaker 1: to the beach and they talk about the ocean as
Speaker 1: this rape vista with all of the life teeming under
Speaker 1: the surface, and my father uses the same metaphor for
Speaker 1: the prairie. Rachel Stroer grew up in Kansas among prairie
Speaker 1: grasses and fields of waving wheat. Across the world, wheat
Speaker 1: production and other annual grains account for seventy of the
Speaker 1: land used for agricultural purposes. Monoculture crops like wheat are
Speaker 1: often grown in enormous single species plots and provide sustenance
Speaker 1: for millions of people, but they also lead the problems.
Speaker 1: The problems in agriculture are nitrate leaching, soil erosion, farmer debt,
Speaker 1: loss of soil organic matter, herbicide resistance, over production, pesticide poisoning,
Speaker 1: and the list goes on. Strawer is the acting president
Speaker 1: of the Kansas based Land Institute. Her organization works to
Speaker 1: promote regenerative agriculture, our rejection of monoculture farming in favor
Speaker 1: of investing in seeds that come back year after year
Speaker 1: and a reduced dependence on chemical fertilizer. The land Institute
Speaker 1: itself breeds new varieties of perennial seeds, one called rnza.
Speaker 1: It's something they hope will replace traditional wheat in everything
Speaker 1: from cereals to crackers, to beer and bread, all the
Speaker 1: while helping to restore nutrient balances in the soil and
Speaker 1: clean the air we breathe. And so what we want
Speaker 1: to do is solve the problem of agriculture, which means
Speaker 1: to create an agriculture that is as regenerative as the
Speaker 1: natural systems that build the soil upon which our food
Speaker 1: systems depends. My co host down Apple Bomb spoke with
Speaker 1: Strower about regenerative agriculture and what it can do to
Speaker 1: help solve the problems faced by farmers and consumers alike.
Speaker 1: Here's their conversation. Rachel, can you start by explaining to
Speaker 1: me what exactly is wrong with the crops that we're growing.
Speaker 1: Our agriculture system is extractive. You can think of this
Speaker 1: as like a bank account. Our agriculture takes more out
Speaker 1: of the resource bank account, which is soil, water, nutrients.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to say our food system is sort
Speaker 1: of a terminal feedback loop of extraction. So you're talking
Speaker 1: about essentially reversing the course of agricultural development as it's
Speaker 1: gone over the last ten thousand years and changing it
Speaker 1: to make it something more natural and more reflective of
Speaker 1: the natural world. Yes, and at the Land Institute specifically,
Speaker 1: we are developing perennial grain crops with the intent to
Speaker 1: grow them in agricultural systems in diverse mixture, so that
Speaker 1: there are multiple species growing in one field. Perennial crop
Speaker 1: sounds very specific. What's the difference between planting an annual
Speaker 1: crop and a perennial crop and why is that so
Speaker 1: important for the environment. An annual crop is tilled up
Speaker 1: every year, so the soil is disturbed on an annual basis.
Speaker 1: And what we've done over time and in particularly in
Speaker 1: the last hundred to two hundred years, is we have
Speaker 1: accommodated for the destruction that we create in tilling by
Speaker 1: using chemical inputs, and so the perennial grain grows back
Speaker 1: year after year and produces a harvestable food crop on
Speaker 1: a perennial basis, so that we don't have to till
Speaker 1: and therefore don't have to use as much or any
Speaker 1: of the chemical inputs that we use today. What's the
Speaker 1: relationship of this idea, this form of regenerative agriculture to
Speaker 1: the problem of carbon emissions. Will this reduce carbon is? That?
Speaker 1: Is that one of the goals of this of this change.
Speaker 1: Not only does it draw down the carbon that was
Speaker 1: released over the last ten thousand years, but it's sustained
Speaker 1: that much of that carbon in the soil over the
Speaker 1: long term, year after year, as the roots stay in
Speaker 1: the ground year after year. So we believe that we
Speaker 1: can read the quester much of what has been lost
Speaker 1: in both the soil carbon as well as the plant
Speaker 1: matter of a perennial stand of grain production. But the
Speaker 1: system that you're talking about, presumably it's more expensive, it
Speaker 1: produces less output. I mean, I'm wondering, you know, if
Speaker 1: this is the better way to do it, how why
Speaker 1: did humanity, you know, stumble upon this cosletely different method
Speaker 1: pursuing it with great energy ever since. I mean, there
Speaker 1: must be a reason why we shifted to this monoculture
Speaker 1: extractive method in the first place. Yes, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different theories about why we didn't develop perennials at
Speaker 1: the beginning of agriculture. One is that when our ancestors
Speaker 1: looked for food in the wild, they noticed that they
Speaker 1: happened upon annuals that actually had larger seeds than the perennials,
Speaker 1: and so they selected the annual plants not because of
Speaker 1: their annual tendency necessarily, but because of what they were producing.
Speaker 1: And then secondly, there was this sort of natural selection
Speaker 1: that happened on those annuals as they began to be
Speaker 1: cultivated that caused them, even without intentional breeding, to become
Speaker 1: even more suited and yield higher inputs. There's also the
Speaker 1: benefit that the annual dies every year that it cannot survive,
Speaker 1: so you can always replace your stand in the next
Speaker 1: year with the best seed from the last year. And
Speaker 1: perennials are very hard to kill. So we can breed
Speaker 1: perennials more easily now because we have knowledge of plant
Speaker 1: breeding and sort of computational skill that allow us to
Speaker 1: move more quickly, and we also have large machinery and
Speaker 1: ways of killing a perennial, you know, or transitioning it out,
Speaker 1: so that we can breed it in a more conventional
Speaker 1: and you in a similar way that we breed annuals
Speaker 1: and half over the last couple hundred years. And that's
Speaker 1: not more expensive, it's not prohibitive in some other way.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't believe that that breeding perennials is
Speaker 1: more expensive than breeding annuals. Today. However, it takes time.
Speaker 1: You know, it's taken an intensified one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: years to get the high yielding grain crops. You know,
Speaker 1: handful of grain crops that we have today, and in
Speaker 1: just about twenty years of intensive breeding on Karnsa perennial grain,
Speaker 1: for instance, it is showing signs of being able to
Speaker 1: live up to its annual wheat substitute in the next
Speaker 1: ten or twenty years. Tell me about Kurnza. It's one
Speaker 1: of the grains that you've promoted, and I've I've read
Speaker 1: a little bit about it. It's being grown by several
Speaker 1: in several places around the country, but it's not on
Speaker 1: the market yet. Tell us about this particular grain and
Speaker 1: why you're working on it. So, Karnsa is one of
Speaker 1: five crops that we're developing at the Land Institute. Five
Speaker 1: perennial grain crops were developing at the Land Institute. It
Speaker 1: is a nuttier version of wheat. Really, it's from the
Speaker 1: plant called intermediate wheat grass. So it looks like wheat
Speaker 1: in a field, but the seed is much smaller. It
Speaker 1: is longer than a wheat berry, which is pretty plump
Speaker 1: and short. Brands like General Mills started using it and
Speaker 1: it is growing on about two thousand acres in the
Speaker 1: United States and also in Sweden and France, and we
Speaker 1: already have over fifty collaborators on six continents. I think
Speaker 1: fifteen countries are represented working in this realm collaborating with
Speaker 1: the Land Institute. There's work in Canada, in Argentina. So
Speaker 1: we're really trying to in the next few years solidify
Speaker 1: that international work because what we're trying to accommodate is
Speaker 1: the seventy percent of ag lands covered in annuals, and
Speaker 1: we're trying to create perennials for all of the grain
Speaker 1: producing regions of the world. Hearing you talk about it
Speaker 1: reminds me of the story of Keenowa, which was also
Speaker 1: a grain that was you know, widely used in Peru
Speaker 1: and was important to the United States and became very fashionable.
Speaker 1: What are the chances that that kurnza could become fashionable too?
Speaker 1: Is there a have you all thought about that? Have
Speaker 1: you tried to promote it? We actually hope that it
Speaker 1: doesn't remain a sort of specialty crop like kin wat
Speaker 1: is that is produced on a more mass scale and
Speaker 1: become sort of a regular ingredient in common everyday products
Speaker 1: like cheerios or in your local bakery would have a
Speaker 1: regular run of kerns of bread or the regular beer
Speaker 1: run from the from the local brewery. We can't have
Speaker 1: the impacts that we want to have on the soils
Speaker 1: of the world if it's limited to sort of a
Speaker 1: specialty crop niche market. What if kurnza was to become
Speaker 1: widespread and available everywhere and how would that change the world?
Speaker 1: I mean, how would that change the atmosph fear? What
Speaker 1: would the impact of that be huge? We will be
Speaker 1: seeing more carbon sequestration, will be seeing less toxic chemical inputs,
Speaker 1: will be feeding the regions around production as well as
Speaker 1: the global food supply chain. Regenera of agriculture is one
Speaker 1: of the few areas that can potentially solve ten percent
Speaker 1: of climate change, and perennial grains specifically on the landscape
Speaker 1: offer one of the most promising avenues for carbon sequestration
Speaker 1: on Earth to date. So I envision that when kurnza
Speaker 1: and other perennial grains like it find their way onto
Speaker 1: the annual production grain production lands of today, which is
Speaker 1: about seventy percent of our total agricultural lands, will also
Speaker 1: be stewarding the livelihoods of farmers and farm workers because
Speaker 1: that we're not requiring the sort of them to maintain
Speaker 1: the economic readmill of farming, which is leading to all
Speaker 1: kinds of consolidation and other issues. So it's a pretty
Speaker 1: utopian vision in my mind if we can get perennials
Speaker 1: on the landscape broadly and globally. Rachel, let me back
Speaker 1: up a little and ask you something a little more basic, namely,
Speaker 1: what drew you to this story, to this issue, why
Speaker 1: perennial crops. How did you originally get interested in farming?
Speaker 1: I mean, was it through a love of food? Was
Speaker 1: it through was it through the landscape? I was born
Speaker 1: and raised in central Kansas, and my father was sort
Speaker 1: of a novice environmentalist and had a prairie land that
Speaker 1: I helped him restore when I was young, So I
Speaker 1: always had a sort of environmental ethic, and I grew
Speaker 1: up in the prairie among these perennial grasslands. People often
Speaker 1: vacation to the beach, and they talk about the ocean
Speaker 1: as the rape vista with all of the life teeming
Speaker 1: under the surface. And my father uses the same metaphor
Speaker 1: for the prairie, which has been described more often as
Speaker 1: sort of a barren wasteland. But he is of the mind,
Speaker 1: and I think it's relevant to this regenerative agriculture soil
Speaker 1: story that there's so much life on the prairie especially,
Speaker 1: and even in the winter, you just can't see it
Speaker 1: because it's below ground. And so you have these waves
Speaker 1: of prairie grasses blowing like waves on the ocean, and
Speaker 1: below them is teeming with life. So I do remember
Speaker 1: as a kid walking and the grasses are quite tall,
Speaker 1: and walking and feeling that the grasses kind of have
Speaker 1: a feathery tip, which is nice, a nice tactile sort
Speaker 1: of connection to that deep underground as you walk, walk,
Speaker 1: or hike through the prairie. People listening to you don't
Speaker 1: work at the Land Institute, they might not live in Kansas.
Speaker 1: What can they do, nevertheless, to support this vision, this
Speaker 1: idea of regenerative agriculture, an idea that you know, we
Speaker 1: can have a more natural form of food production. What
Speaker 1: can ordinary people do to support that? Simply learning and
Speaker 1: then advocating for what you learn is a great way
Speaker 1: to participate. Go to the Land Institute's website read more.
Speaker 1: There's all kinds of book projects. Draw Down has all
Speaker 1: kinds of information about what's called carbon farming. Eat perennially.
Speaker 1: There are perennial things that you could eat now, can
Speaker 1: you name a few for us? Almonds, tree crops. There
Speaker 1: are some perennial vegetables, avocados, asparagus, and the list goes on.
Speaker 1: This idea of diverse perennial grain production is the best
Speaker 1: technology we know of today to get our agricultural production
Speaker 1: functioning as close as possible to the natural systems that
Speaker 1: came before it and built the soil upon which we eat.
Speaker 1: One final question, you know, I understand why this is
Speaker 1: ecologically more sustainable. Is it economically sustainable? Should there be
Speaker 1: subsidies for this kind of agriculture? Do you need them
Speaker 1: in the near term? I think that our entire agricultural
Speaker 1: subsidies program should turn towards more regenerative practices to incentivize
Speaker 1: as a sort of turning of the Titanic from facing
Speaker 1: an annual paradigm to facing a perennial one. My vision
Speaker 1: of the future over the long term, we will not
Speaker 1: need to subsidize agriculture because it will be self sustaining
Speaker 1: in a really beautiful and ecological way. Rachel Strower is
Speaker 1: acting President of the Land Institute. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out our show notes to learn more about regenerative agriculture
Speaker 1: and here it's Solvable. We're wishing you a restorative and
Speaker 1: regenerative holiday season. We'll be back with more in the
Speaker 1: new y year. Until then, if you had a favorite
Speaker 1: episode this past season, consider sharing it with a friend.
Speaker 1: Solvable is produced by Camille Baptista and this is Camille's
Speaker 1: last week was Solvable. We'll miss your terrific work, Camille.
Speaker 1: The senior producer of Solvable is Jocelyn Frank. Katherine Girardeau
Speaker 1: is our managing producer. Mia Lobell is our executive producer.
Speaker 1: We're also saying goodbye this week to our research intern,
Speaker 1: Kobe Guildford. Kobe, it's been great to have your help
Speaker 1: this semester special thanks to Carly Migliori, Kadija Holland, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: and Heather Fame. I'm Jacob Weisberg.