Wes Jackson and Land Institute working on perennial grain crops to preserve farmland

Farmers have always faced the day when their land can no longer support crops, but if one Kansas farmer and entrepreneur has his way, that problem will be gone forever. Wes Jackson, left, founder of the Land Institute, has been working toward alternative agriculture methods since the 1960s, but his focus was honed by an epiphany regarding the way perennials actually improve the soil instead of degrading it, Richard Harris of National Public Radio reports.

"I thought, why can't we solve this 10,000-year-old problem?" Jackson tells Harris. "The solution is to build an agriculture based on the way nature's ecosystems work." Jackson hired a team of scientists to research cross-breeding traditional crops and perennials to create new crops that would need to be planted only once and harvested year after year. Eight years of research into wheat crops have produced rows of hundreds of wheat-grass hybrid plants that grow year-round in the Institute greenhouse. The Institute plans to plant these hybrids in the fields soon, hoping that something that produces a lot of grain and tastes like wheat will sprout up.

"It's like scratching off lottery tickets," Lee DeHaan, one of the Jackson's first wheat researchers, tells Harris. "Maybe there's something amazing in there. We'll see. That's why we love to be plant breeders. Maybe this is the year when you make the big breakthrough. That's kind of the fun of it." The Land Institute is also currently working on hybrid sunflower and sorghum populations. Jackson says to solve global climate change and growing population challenges you have to start small: "You start with a resilient food system," he says. "And we don't have one." (Read more)