Thursday, October 22, 2009

Breeding Wheat With Prairie Grass

Cool NPR article on a 600 acre Land Institute in Kansas, run by Wes Jackson, trying to solve agriulture's 10,000 year old problem--that'd be unsustainable practices with planting annuals that soak up nutrients, and plowing that lets the dirt fly away / run off. Click here. They've started hybridizing wheat with grasses, and making perennial sunflowers and sorghum.

3 comments:

Gillian Lee said...

Do you have Chiptole restaurants in NE? Just as an aside - Chiptole occassionaly has donation days where a portion of their proceeds goes to the Land Insitute. Anyway, I was exposed to this organization through Donald and Bev Worster at KU. -Fascinating stuff.

our friend Ben said...

Wes Jackson is one of my heroes, Benjamin. Thanks for giving him a shout!

Benjamin Vogt said...

GL--Yes, we have Chipotle! I'll have to check out if they have any of these special days.
OFB--Well, I just discovered him, so looking forward to learning more.