The 2003 Prairie Festival years ago
By PAUL JANTZEN
Contributing writer
The first prairie enthusiast I met upon arrival at the Land Institute was a man from New Jersey. We both came to this rural area a few miles southeast of Salina on this September morning for the 25th annual Prairie Festival. The 600 participants came from 34 states and represented numerous institutions such as colleges and other groups and individuals interested in environmental and ecology issues.
The first scheduled activity was an informal tour of exhibits describing Natural Systems Agriculture (NSA) research programs at the Institute. This research attempts to revolutionize agriculture by mimicking the prairie.
Instead of crops of annual monocultures, NSA attempts to develop polycultures of perennials. The use of perennials would reduce yearly soil preparation and require less irrigation and fertilization. Perennial stems and leaves could provide continuous protection from wind erosion while the roots would resist water erosion. Worms, fungi, and microorganisms in the soil would be less disturbed. Less tilling, less fertilizer, and less irrigation would reduce production expenses.
Geneticists at the Institute are collecting seeds from across Kansas for different strains of perennials to breed with high-producing annual crops. The common perennial Maximilian sunflower has been crossed with annual crop sunflowers. The wild perennial Illinois bundleflower, a legume, is being investigated for high-yielding, large-seeded, and shatter-resistant strains. They have crossed annual sorghums with wild perennial johnsongrass. They are working on the development of perennial small grains through hybridization. So, they are perennializing current annual crops and domesticating promising wild perennials.
Institutions cooperating with the Land Institute include the University of Minnesota, the Rodale Institute, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The mixing of crop species (poluculturing) makes the spread of diseases and other pests more difficult. This reduces the pressure to use pesticides which may threaten wildlife populations and human water supplies. Bacteria in the roots of legumes scattered among other species can fix atmospheric nitrogen for use by plants in making proteins.
By making agriculture more diverse and long-lived, the Institute looks into the future making agriculture more like the prairie. And in the process, they may reduce costs of labor, fuel, machinery, and soil loss.
Institute scientist Jerry Glover addressed the challenge of feeding the 8-10 billion people in the world in the next 50 years without destroying the natural systems on which our lives depend. Grain crops will be in greater demand. But annual crops grown in disease-and-pest-prone monocultures often severely degrade soil and water. Even with the federal Conservation Reserve Program, more than one-third of our nation's cropland loses soil faster than it is replaced — 15 percent of it is lost at twice the replacement rate.
Marty Bender, also an Institute scientist, reported that the United States uses 25 percent of the world's petroleum, produces 10 percent of it, and owns two percent of its oil reserves. The 65 percent of the world's petroleum reserves in the Persian Gulf suggests a possible motive for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he said.
Winona LaDuke, the Green Party's 2002 vice presidential candidate, spoke as an advocate of the rights of Native Americans, the original human inhabitants of the North American prairie.
David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World and veteran of a variety of international aid organizations, gave an eye-opening analysis of the increasing poverty, growing inequality, environmental destruction, and social disintegration he observed in Asia and now sees in nearly every country in the world — including the U.S., Europe, and Japan. He concludes that the U.S. is promoting policies, at home and abroad, that deepen the global crisis. The world's largest corporations allied with the most powerful governments are integrating the world's economies in such a manner that the mega-corporations are free to move goods and money any place in the world that has potential for profit, without government interference. A healthy society, says Korten, is based on the balanced interactions of civic, government, and economic sectors.
The civic sector is the conscience of society and generates a sense of meaning to community life. The civic sector gives government the authority to use power in the public interest such as public order, collecting taxes, etc. The economic sector produces goods and services but does not prevent the unscrupulous from selling guns, drugs, and tobacco, or from creating environmental damage.
The integrity of society depends on a balance of these three sectors, but they are now dangerously skewed toward rule by huge corporations whose interest is primarily profit for stock holders and CEOs. He quoted former U.S. president Rutherford Hayes: This "is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations."
And what do corporations care about human needs, endangered species, wetlands, wildlife, soil, and prairie?
