Wes Jackson Reflections

I recently had the chance to hear Wes Jackson, the founder of the Land Institute (www.landinstitute.org) in Salina, KS speak. Jackson is always an inspiring speaker having such an ingenious use of words and brilliant mind. Sadly, due to the smaller and more intimate crowd and being among friends, Jackson was much more pessimistic about what the future holds. Climatologists continue to paint a grimmer picture for climate change, while policies to control anthropogenic greenhouse gases continue to be stalled. Jackson has been in the forefront of envisioning an agriculture system that is resilient and based on ecology. Below are some of his thoughts:

· So far, the sustainable agriculture movement has focused on produce, which makes up only 7% of agricultural movement. Grain and meat production need to be captured by the sustainable agriculture movement.

· “High energy destroys public knowledge of the biological and cultural variety.” Our dependence on fossil fuels has greatly reduced our reliance and knowledge of our cultural and biological capital, much to the detriment of ourselves and our environment.

· Jackson called capitalism “petri dish economics.” Capitalism (and the discoveries of fossil fuels) has lead to a rapid population explosion and rapid exploitation of all available natural resources.

· We are in the wrong paradigm: We have been trying to solve problems on the molecular level (GMO), but should be solving problems on the ecological level (perennial grains).

· We need to rebuild agriculture on natural ecosystems

· Continuity is better than ingenuity (referring to building agriculture on an ecological versus a molecular level).