I grew up in Manhattan, but went to the farm quite a lot and I always enjoyed that. My background really is very very scattered. I’m a geologist by training and spent some time on the dark side. Worked for oil companies in Alaska and so forth, was involved in one of the real early wells on the North Slope. Then, through a real strange bit of twists and turns, I ended up in the investment banking business and spent about 25 years in there, pretty much detesting every moment of it.
And one time when I came back for an alumni meeting, because I do have a degree from K-State as well, one of the people that I respected there met me at the airport and said, “you’re not really coming to this meeting are you?” And I said, “look, I didn’t fly back here just for the fun of it. What do you mean?” And he said, “Well, there’s a fellow over in Salina that I think you ought to meet." I said, “Look, I grew up in Manhattan; nobody smart ever came from Salina.”
He said, “Ah, well that’s the way it is, is it? Well, in that case, I’m not even taking you into town, we’re going directly to Salina and you can meet Wes Jackson.” He told me about Wes Jackson on the way over. That was in the very early days here.
The Land Institute is best known for its work towards perennializing grain crops. What does that mean? At its simplest, it's an attempt to change our crop habits from annuals (plant the corn, grow the corn, harvest the corn, repeat) to a prairie-like diversified system. A farmer would harvest multiple crops at once from a complex prairie of edible grains, but would not have to replant because they are perennials; their roots keep them alive and they re-sprout on their own the following year.
Travis and I were deep in the heart of summertime Kansas when we pulled up on August 2nd. There we met with Ken Warren, managing director of The Land Institute. It was nice to hear a voice other than the prolific Wes Jackson's, and Ken is a passionate conversationalist and scientist in his own right.
Ken sat with us and gave a full tour of the property for a very pleasant few hours while he explained the issues of perennializing wheat and other grains. Ken is a great presenter and he pulled out all the stops for Travis and I, explaining that the average American gets 70% of his/her calories from grains as he kicked out a 20-foot-long poster across the floor depicting the massive root system of wheat that has been perennialized. Wheat that is in the field for more than a year has a HUGE root system, let me tell you. We saw another example of this later on in the visit when Ken drove us out to the plots of wheat and we climbed down into a pit that had been excavated to give a great visual of the root system of a grand-daddy wheat plant.
You might wonder what the benefits are of perennialized food. The cost of growing it would be much much less, as farmers would be spared the yearly seed and planting expenses, and much of the fertilizer/equipment/fuel expense. That would translate into lower prices at the grocery store or bakery. Erosion control in one of the home states of the dust bowl would be mightily enhanced by the ever-growing root systems these plants have to offer, and perhaps all the doomsday predictors who say we'll be starving by 2050 could come to the conclusion that food that keeps on growing without being tilled/plowed/worked/etc. could provide bread in the face of upcoming disaster.
There is a popular saying that Trav and I saw on billboards in middle America that went something like this: "Every farmer feeds 129 Americans." Wendell Berry responded to that with "well, you'd have to slice them pretty thin." Ken quoted that to us and imparted his belief that farming is an incredibly risky act and farmers are the biggest gamblers, with the most to lose, in our society. Shouldn't they (and we) have the benefit of growing food that will keep giving instead of re-buying it every year?
We asked Ken, as we asked all farmers, what the role of the farmer should be in our society:
First of all, he’s gotta be more interactive. Farmers don’t even talk to each other! We have a farmer that works with us who really does understand controlling inputs. In fact he has a pickup truck he calls Herb because he bought it with herbicide savings. He doesn’t feel comfortable talking to his neighbors about his methods, although he knows that per acre he makes more money than they do, and is probably lots better for the environment than they are.
Wheat isn't the only crop that is being bred and crossed for perennializationmilo), sunflowers, and corn are included. One of the tenets of The Land Institute is that a diverse crop has a much greater chance of being healthy. Ken struggles with getting more input from farmers themselves about what they'd like to see, and when the day is done, what they'd actually buy. He lamented that most farmers "are not a chatty bunch."
We asked him a question that Trav had wondered for some time. How does a perennial system respond to the argument that we need to increase yields of all crops to "feed the world" in the coming years?
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I don’t know how you do that. I mean, it frightens me that every 15 days we add to the population of this planet the size of the population of this state. And when I think about that I just think, “there’s no way!”
Of all things that give me a real start, thinking about the hope for the future, that’s one that really is a sobering one. And if you don’t bring it up, people always say, “eh, well, have you considered population growth??” “We considered population.” “What’re you doin’ about it?” “What am I doing about it?” Preaching. I don’t know what else to do.
Ken also is a bit frustrated and was candid with his doubts and concerns about the perennialization process. He spoke of the struggling Plains farmers and the booming world population.
Farmers can’t live right now without the subsidies. Back when those diesel fuel prices went crazy, it was really close out here for a lot of them.
They didn’t realize, I think, that the last of diesel fuel is not gonna be running a tractor, it’s gonna be in a Hummer limousine going somewhere. They really got to thinking about that. And they got to thinking, “you know, we can’t afford to irrigate this corn anymore, ‘cause we’re up against it, takes a lot of energy to do that.” So what happens? Ethanol raises its ugly head. And it makes all of that thing profitable again. And they go back to their old habits.
The real thing you’d like to see happen is more of that money go back to the farmer. And stay in their pockets and stay in their communities. That’s probably as big a dream as any.
How does a town like this one live if trucks don’t come down the interstate? We don’t know how to grow food. What would we do? We used to have a diversified support system around here. Today’s paper, always does, has a little column that goes back 25, 50, 75, 100 years. You read about those things and you realize what we lost here.
On a final note, if there is anyone out there who does think of farmers in celebrity terms then prepare yourself to feel a twinge of jealousy- Trav and I did exchange hello's and how-do's with Wes Jackson. As we wrapped up our interview with Ken, a middle-aged, dirty-from-the-fields man walked in the door and asked us if we needed anything, which we didn't, but it was nice of him to offer. He sure looked like he could stand a glass of ice water to survive the ups and downs of mimicking the perennialized American prairie.
Click on the jump below to read most of the interview, including discussion of genetic diversity, the difference between traditional breeding and genetic engineering, and some sobering thoughts on how farmers in Kansas are faring. He also goes into detail of the process of combining modern annual wheat with its perennial cousin.
KEN WARREN, THE LAND INSTITUTE: FULL INTERVIEW
I grew up in Manhattan, but went to the farm quite a lot and I always enjoyed that. My background really is very very scattered. I’m a geologist by training and spent some time on the dark side. Worked for oil companies in Alaska and so forth, was involved in one of the real early wells on the North Slope. Then, through a real strange bit of twists and turns, I ended up in the investment banking business and spent about 25 years in there, pretty much detesting every moment of it.
And one time when I came back for an alumni meeting, because I do have a degree from K-State as well, one of the people that I respected there met me at the airport and said, “you’re not really coming to this meeting are you?” And I said, “look, I didn’t fly back here just for the fun of it. What do you mean?” And he said, “Well, there’s a fellow over in Salina that I think you ought to meet. I said, “Look, I grew up in Manhattan; nobody smart ever came from Salina.”
He said, “Ah, well that’s the way it is, is it? Well, in that case, I’m not even taking you into town, we’re going directly to Salina and you can meet Wes Jackson.” He told me about Wes Jackson on the way over. That was in the very early days here.
This place started in 1976, when Wes pretty much left a tenured position down in Sacramento State running one of the first environmental science programs in the country. He came back here because he understood the futility of that. So I met Wes. And I didn’t think a lot about that but then I was in the east coast for a little while for a meeting. I was also part of the New Alchemy community there, and Wes was giving a talk, so I just went down. Missed another meeting. Heard Wes, and you know…I just…he’s the Pied Piper. He really is.
I always kind of enjoyed thinking about this place. Then in the mid-80’s I moved back into Kansas City and became more of a regular visitor here. In about ’95 I finally asked Wes what it costs to work out here. So he made me an offer that I’m still working off payments on. And so I came out here and have been here about 16 years now almost.
My real interest was just…coming from a farming background I could see that the way we were doing farming was pretty much totally destructive. I was particularly interested in the water angle because as a geologist I understood what we were doing to the aquifers and so forth. And to the soils. So I was sure that the methodology suggested by Wes in his vision was correct. I was not sure we could pull it off here.
And I’m still not. We’re still at that phase of trying to figure out if this will really work. But I knew that if it could be perfected, there was not one kind of objection you could make to industrial agriculture that this model would not fix.
What’s your role here now?
I’m the managing director. That position’s largely…things that people don’t want to do. I don’t do much in the way of fundraising but I do run the day to day operations and I give a fair amount of presentations every year. That’s my major role; sort of a backup for Wes when he’s on one of his numerous trips. And I do things like organizing the annual festival we have each year.
What’s that like?
Well, it’s like something you wouldn’t quite believe. I’m always amazed by it. We have anywhere between 600 and 1000 people here in the barn. And we’ve really had some of the most prominent speakers. You could name somebody that’s been on the front page of the foodie kind of movement, they’ve been here! It’s just remarkable, an outing for 3 days.
So you said that you’re not quite sure if this can be pulled off here. Do you mean you’re not sure if it can be pulled off or it needs to be spread out into other climates?
It definitely needs that. I think we’re fairly certain that we can do some things with individual perennial crops. Whether we can meet the total vision of being a pure mimic of the prairie…and I don’t mean pure; I mean a functional mimic of the prairie with mixed cropping systems on a landscape…I’m not sure.
We are moving toward some crops that I think have good promise. To give you a little idea of the kinds of approached we’re taking: When Wes put this vision together of course, he thought of the prairie as his model, which for Kansas it’s not very hard to think about. As we started looking at that, it made absolute sense. Here you have this very diverse system that honors conservation and biodiversity, it runs on sunlight, rain, and it protects soils.
But the thing about this whole idea of making an agricultural system that looks like the prairie is it has one glaring weakness. And that is that prairie plants as a whole have seed structures that are not very spectacular. There’s not many seeds there and they’re darn small. So that part of the vision was particularly weak given that 70% of our calories come from grains.
If I came to Wes with that kind of an objection, I’m sure he would say, “Well, I forgot you’re a geologist; I’ll speak more slowly.” And he’d say that the thing you need to remember is, of the 13 major grain crops, 10 have perennial relatives. So annual wheat {pulls out some dried grains} for example, here’s it’s perennial relative. If I wanted to think about perennializing crops and growing them in mixtures, that’s a biological problem.
Your other response would probably be, “if you’re going to create a new species just by crossing these two plants, it’s gonna take a long time.” And of all of the objections that are hard to overcome in plant breeding, the time one is one that’s hard. Monsanto’s taken a few shortcuts, but that doesn’t appeal to us. The whole process…even taking wheat and making a new variety of it can take 10-12 years. So perennialization is a slow process. And it’s very laborious.
This whole photo essay here shows that, for example, wheat, if left to its own devices, even planted next to its relative, is not going to cross out very easily because it’s self-pollinating. So to get the hybrid started takes a lot of just plain hard work. Then, because that first cross is not between close cousins, that means that you have to actually extract the embryo from a seed that would not grow otherwise, and grow it out. So getting that breeding process going for hybrid wheat is very time consuming, expensive. Wheat is a crop that has to go through a winter, so you have to kind of convince it every now and again that it’s winter. Even now we’ve got plants we’re convincing it’s winter, in cool chambers. The only way to speed this process up is to get an extra generation or two each year.
{shows us a board with various stages of sorghum crossing}
Sorghum you may not know real well. It’s called milo. Kansas grows more than any other state in the country. The problem with sorghum, in my way of thinking, is that it’s mostly fed to animals. We’re working with sorghum of food-quality. Food-quality? Where?! Well food quality-mostly in the tropics. It’s an absolute human staple in Africa and so forth. Makes a great flatbread. It has no gluten, so is used in this country in things like gluten-free beer.
But this nasty perennial weed here, Johnson grass, is a close cousin. So you can see as you start picking up the first crosses between these, you start getting more and more yield. So this would take you up through about F4. So 4 crosses will get you into that kind of a level of seed growth {points to a plant on the chart with significantly more seeds than Johnson grass}. Then you start hybridizing that back against the annual and you start picking up more and more grain in the process.
Out of this process you’re starting to see some product that starting to look more and more like grain sorghum itself, and it overwinters. Here. It overwinters here. We have several families of sorghum—by that I mean 400—that are perennial. And the really nice thing about perennials is the long growing season, which allows them to come up earlier than our annuals are planted, they develop a good root system, and they’re more resilient to things like drought around here. So the longer the growing season, probably the better off you are in this kind of a climate.
These are the kinds of process that we’re doing that got things rolling. Now, it’s quite probable and possible to take this small-seeded plant, which is, by the way, called intermediate wheatgrass, and when you cross it with a plant with large seeds you can get good-sized seeds as the hybrid. Problem is, those don’t reliably grow when we plant them in plots. The reason is that the annual nature of this plant means that this time of year, when it gets as nasty as it is right now {late July}, that plant has a very difficult time getting through the summer. It’s used to being dead! Harvested, gone! That’s the problem with this particular degree of hybridization.
Are there solutions to that? Well there are solutions. Keep it up! Maybe out of 1000 seeds that you plant, 10 plants will grow. That’s the good news. You can harvest enough seeds from that. We have sent those hybrid seeds literally around the world…Australia, China, Turkey, Sweden, Canada...for others to grow out and determine the geographic range of this.
So that process is ongoing. We have just hired a new plant breeder who is more into looking at genetic markers on these plants to find out where the genes come from. We do have a means of figuring out where chromosomes come from in these plants through a fluorescent kind of microscopy and there’s even more whiz-bang models than that.
{continues discussion of the science of plant breeding}
The other thing that’s appealing about perennials: Why not just think of this perennial plant a more productive plant on its own? Is there a way to increase the seed yield in this without hybridization? And that’s called domestication.
When we talk about domesticating intermediate wheatgrass, what we’re talking about is raising the yield. Well, what are you going to have? At the end of this you’re gonna have a plant that people have never paid a nickel to eat. So how do you know whether this plant is really going to be a crop plant in the end?
The one kind of thing that is hardest for people to realize, I think, in this agricultural business, is those people are growing lots of things, but the one thing they’re not growing is much grain. When 70% of your calories come from that, somebody’s got to do it. As you go into Western Kansas, those are the somebodies that are doing it! But man, I don’t know for how long.
So, very promising from the standpoint of cereal chemistry. We have used it in baking. It makes good breads, cookies, cakes. A national restaurant chain has used it in some of their outlets as a blend in some of their products. Their customers have reported no difference in taste.
So we have trademarked this particular plant actually, under the name Kernza. We are in the process of increasing its yield. Yeah, but how bad is the yield? The yield’s bad to start with. Wheat, around here…50 bushels an acres, 60 pounds per bushel, 3000 pounds per acre. Kernza…100. So we can increase the yield about 10% every breeding cycle, which is a 2 year cycle. Still incredibly slow.
Farmers realize in this part of the world that they’re up against it. Their product prices have not increased although their energy costs have increased. In some cases they’re worried about competing for things like water. I think in order to make this saleable to farmers, you’ve got to show them that the economics work. I mean you hate to think of farmers being capitalists, but they are. Have to stay in business. So either someone’s going to have to pay a lot per pound for that, or we’ve got to get that yield way up there.
{Discusses cool-season grasses and climate pressure issues when breeding}
You were talking a bit about what it would mean for farmers if this vision was accomplished…what would it mean for non-farmers?
Well…there’s several things it could mean for non-farmers. But were gonna have to change our ways, and that seems to be the hardest part. For example, one of the really interesting things if you happen to believe in eating meat is that this whole situation…after you cut all of this you’ve still got a lot of vegetation on the ground…you could bring in livestock after that and have them graze that residue. An acre of prairie will provide the same amount of beef as an acre of corn does. Cows shouldn’t be eating corn anyway, but…
The problem is, it takes more time. So one of the things they could do is provide for a wholesale change in meat production, but everyone would have to really cur down on the amount of red meat they eat. That could change a lot there.
Not to mention all the farmers with their tradition…
Oh yeah. Now, in Kansas I think you’d be pretty hard pressed to find a real diversified farmer. I mean, there was a show done on regional public TV here about a young couple in Nebraska farming. They were literally starving to death on their farm. You wouldn’t think that’s possible. But they’re not diversified enough to grow things like gardens. He went to state university. He learned how to grow grain. But that was about all they grew on the farm.
You know there’s a sign along the highway that you see in Kansas regularly, “one farmer feeds 129 others” or something like that. Well, Wendell Berry says you have slice them awful thin! Because they don’t feed themselves.
The other thing, of course, this means is…the real onus is to try…to try to feed this population that we’ve got. And we aren’t doing it now, so why should we worry. This {perennial cropping} could be used on wider landscape treatments. If you’re gonna take land out of CRP, don’t put it into corn. Put it into a mixed perennial grouping of grain, and then we got a chance of getting some yield. Vandanna Shiva of course, and some others talk about the difference between food and commodities. That’s what you’re seeing as you drive along, there’s a lot of people growing commodities; there’s probably less in this state growing food. We have ethanol plants. You want to listen to commercials on radio, they’ll talk to soybean farmers and say, “you know, even the seat of the tractor you’re sitting on is made out of soybeans.” That’s just sickening! That’s food! A soybean’s a wonderful food product. Let’s get serious here.
I hope that we can keep the grain yields up, but…we’re whistling past the graveyard with that population issue. Oh man, I mean I don’t know how to get around that one. Do you?!
I’d say ever since we headed west and got to about Illinois what we started hearing was “we need to double our production.”
Yep.
“We need to double our yield in order to feed the world.” To anybody that’s not versed in this, or not interested in this, or not willing to consider something different, that’s going to be their first argument.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I don’t know how you do that. I mean, it frightens me that every 15 days we add to the population of this planet the size of the population of this state. And when I think about that I just think, “there’s no way!”
Of all things that give me a real start, thinking about the hope for the future, that’s one that really is a sobering one. And if you don’t bring it up, people always say, “eh, well, have you considered population growth??” “We considered population.” “What’re you doin’ about it?” “What am I doing about it?” Preaching. I don’t know what else to do.
You know, let’s empower women. Women are getting onto the farm in bigger numbers in this country than men. Let’s go back to making it economically possible for those people to have less kids. But…this {Kernza wheat} won’t feed that many people. I’m sure other methods won’t either. Because I don’t know how you get along without soil.
If you can show me that someone’s got a computer prototype replacing soil and water, then all talk to them. But when I read articles about people putting in vertical farming operations in cities, in buildings, I just go, “my gosh, what are we thinking about?” You know the energy require just to get enough light for those plants to grow is more than we can even produce.
We’re gonna get back to a system that somehow involves perennials, I think, whether it’s people that are hunting and gathering up here in the North Pole like people like {James} Lovelock and others believe…I don’t know if we’re gonna get back to that. I’m afraid.
That’d be several billion people hunting and gathering.
Yeah, they’re gonna ravage things pretty fast that way! I just don’t see… Do you have hope yourselves?
Well…yeah, because we can always at least focus on ourselves, which can sound like a cop out, but sometimes I think that that’s what people are going to have to do not long from now.
Yep! Not long is right. And I would say that most folks like us, probably our best coping technique ought to be something to do with shooting your gun, because people have always become raiders when things got short! The word river comes from “rivalis”, people who drink from the same water source. That’s gonna be tough. I hate to think about this, let’s don’t talk about this! {laughs}
I’m curious…from your perspective, not necessarily The Land Institute’s, maybe they’re the same…you said that there’s certain companies out there that are taking shortcuts to breeding technique. And that that doesn’t appeal to you. Why not?
Well, let me say that the reason it doesn’t appeal to me is it’s largely done for short term economic gain and probably the long term biological stability of that…I do have a minor in biology, to be fair, I’m not just a geologist {chuckles}…
When you’re doing all of this shifting of genes you’re a gene jocky anyway. It’s just the long way {points to posters of perennial crossings}…And I think one of the fears that I’ve never really expressed openly very often is that maybe nature’s already tried this and it didn’t work. It’s been around long enough that these things could happen, but I don’t think so because it’s too hard.
Okay, so, if I were to take the genome of annual wheat and spread it out, just like this photo here, and say, “looking at this genome, there are three places on here that appear to tell this plant that it’s an annual.” Well, Monsanto thinks it’s invented the terminator gene. Nature’s had it all along, it’s called an annual plant! So I take those three spots and I turn it off biologically. You’re no longer an annual. Take intermediate wheatgrass, lay out its genome. There’s a perennial gene, there’s one over there. Snatch them up, put them into wheat. Do I have a perennial? Maybe.
Look at the seedhead of intermediate wheatgrass. Look at that seedhead of wheat. I know that seedhead of wheat has one gene that tells it to make that kind of head. It’s called a Q-gene. If I extract that Q-gene and shoot it into intermediate wheatgrass, its relative, will it develop a head like that? If it does, man, I did something pretty neat here. And how do I feel about this when I go to sleep at night? I am shortcutting something that could have happened the long way because I am just taking genes between relatives in the same tribe of plants. So you say, “well, being a rational human being, you’re just rationalizing that.” And I could be. But I think I could sit still for that. And that would shortcut our process probably a great deal. Who knows, because we haven’t tried it.
Again, on a personal level, aside from the work that has been done here in the direct replacement of crops that you’re working on, what would be some ideal changes you would like to see in the ag system?
Wow. Hm…more people on the land. The saddest thing for those of us that are from this part of the world is seeing this landscape withering from the standpoint of humans. One of the problems of course is there’s not many people who care about farming. And Wendell Berry spoke of this in 1977 in The Unsettling Of America, he said the real worry is you’ll get down to the need for farmers and no one’s going to know how to do it. We’re nearly at that point right now.
Farmers are great risk takers. But they’re very risk-averse. Farming is a great risky act, but the county agent comes to them and says, “I’m gonna give you a presecription of the crops you’ll grow this year. Here’s the crop you’re gonna grow, here’s what it’s gonna take to grow that.” Most farmers are gonna do it. Because they can’t take the risk that it won’t work.
So my real worry is that we have gotten so immersed in the corporate ownership of university systems and the landscape; and I don’t mean they own the land. Corporations are too smart to own farms mostly! ‘Cause the yields are too low for them. But they control it. The farmers launder the subsidy money right through to them. Doesn’t stay in town. The joke in Kansas is you can starve a farmer by taking away their mailbox. That’s where their check comes from.
So the changes you’d really like to see made are for farmers to reap more rewards for what they do and be less reliant on people like the government. I worry that someday someone in Washington is going to say “we gotta cut costs someplace. And people have been crying about the subsidies and how the rich get richer and so forth, let’s cut them.” It’s not gonna work. Farmers can’t live right now without the subsidies. Back when those diesel fuel prices went crazy, it was really close out here for a lot of them.
They didn’t realize, I think, that the last of diesel fuel is not gonna be running a tractor, it’s gonna be in a Hummer limousine going somewhere. They really got to thinking about that. And they got to thinking, “you know, we can’t afford to irrigate this corn anymore, ‘cause we’re up against it, takes a lot of energy to do that.” So what happens? Ethanol raises its ugly head. And it makes all of that thing profitable again. And they go back to their old habits.
The real thing you’d like to see happen is more of that money go back to the farmer. And stay in their pockets and stay in their communities. That’s probably as big a dream as any.
How does a town like this one live if trucks don’t come down the interstate? We don’t know how to grow food. What would we do? We used to have a diversified support system around here. Today’s paper, always does, has a little column that goes back 25, 50, 75, 100 years. You read about those things and you realize what we lost here.
Is there anybody growing vegetables around here outside of their own personal garden plot?
Very few. Our farmers’ market has maybe 6 vendors. This is a tough climate.
It’s so amazing for a state that…you know, from the west coast we’ve always been told that this is the breadbasket. And this is where things grow.
Sure. But if that farmer’s gonna feed 129 people you do have to slice them awful thin. It is tough to grow things here. There’s very limited amounts of vegetables grown here. The orchards that were here in some small respect are gone now. Not much is grown.
There is reputedly a person who is going to open a local food restaurant here come September. And I’ll be real interested to see what that looks like.
Bread and corn?
Yeah! Exactly! Here. Can all be eaten a bowl.
00:59:00
Discussion of diversity and monoculture.
1:00:45
What do you think the role of the farmer should be in society?
First of all, he’s gotta be more interactive. Farmers don’t even talk to each other! We have a farmer that works with us who really does understand controlling inputs. In fact he has a pickup truck he calls Herb because he bought it with herbicide savings. He doesn’t feel comfortable talking to his neighbors about his methods, although he knows that per acre he makes more money than they do, and is probably lots better for the environment than they are.
The local arts center here was talking about water issues. The director called me and said, “who would you get on a group like this?” I said, “oh, you need someone from USGS, there’s people there who can help you out, and you need an irrigator.” “What?” “You need an irrigator.” “Why?” “Because unless you’re gonna talk to an irrigator, you aren’t gonna talk about the water at all. And the irrigator need to sit down with the person that you will have who’s probably one of your big donors who waters their yard everyday.”
A farmer will come into town and say, “well they’re irrigatin’ those green lawns up there! That’s a poor use of water!” The yard person will say, “that’s a poor use of water to irrigate those fields.” And they’re both right.
We need to get really interactive with our farmers and they aren’t a chatty bunch. But we need to seek their input and get them involved in trying to make this greater decision. If we can ever get to some sort of ecological accounting, done on a practical basis, not just a statistical basis, I think we could make some real headway, say “what does it really cost to do that?” Cost!
And if we could make decisions based on that we might have a chance of getting some place. And not getting involved with farmers, and I don’t mean at the farmers’ market saying, “Man, I really like that cantaloupe there, that’s really a nice cantaloupe.” I mean getting involved with those people on the landscape, doing the big stuff, getting the mutual concerns out there. I think it’d be really helpful.
There’s a group starting up in Kansas called Kansas Dialogue that attempts to do this. I think it’s really important that we talk about this kind of a thing. I would really like to see farmers, consumers, interested people get together and put the guns away and just talk. It gets awful contentious in a hurry around here.
What’s impressed you the most when you’ve gone out and seen farmers?
On a personal level the most impressive things for me have been…two different things. One would be that people with really nice 3-5 acre diversified plots, a lot of young folks, who have put together a CSA and are very ecologically-minded are supplying 80 families or something. It seems like a great model. There’s been this huge boom of young folks starting farms, small plots, supplying people, I feel like it’s like a baby boomer kind of thing, and I’m curious to see in 10 years how many of them are going to burn out. How many of them are going to keep going, how many are going to get bigger? How that will evolve, because it’s kind of like starting agriculture over in a way.
The other ones that have been really impressive have been 5, 6, 7 generations in, and they’ve got a kid who they think is going to be interested. Whether it’s a dairy or whatever it is. They keep going! Against a lot of odds, especially the dairies who have had it really hard the last couple of years. And a lot of those generational folks, one of the questions that we often ask is “why did you keep farming?” Especially if they’re close to a city where they know land prices went way up. Why are they still doing it? They’ve all got good, very humanist, positive reasons for why.
Did you visit any Amish communities?
Yeah.
That must have been interesting to you.
We interviewed an Amish farmer and a couple of old-order Mennonites in Pennsylvania and Virginia mostly.
{continues discussion of trip, Amish, Percy Schmeiser…}
{Head out for a walk and he shows us more posters and information on the way out}
{Get a tour of facilities, drive around, discuss old and new research}
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