Kansas native and founder of the Land Institute, Wes Jackson, “spent the last 39 years warning us that grain farmers are destroying the planet,” says the Wichita Eagle. Jackson, who devoted decades in trying to make a perennial grain out of prairie grass, says “he’ll start a phased retirement on his 80th birthday next June.” While some advocates of mainstream agriculture are skeptical of Jackson’s ideas, they say he deserves respect. He won a MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 1992.
“At Jackson’s Land Institute, he and an array of plant geneticists and other experts have developed plants, including ‘Kernza,’ an edible grain he says is the first in many steps toward feeding billions without poisoning or washing away the land,” said the Eagle. The Land Institute was born of Jackson’s dismay at excessive soil erosion from crop tillage.