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- Wes Jackson (born 1936) is the founder and current president of The Land Institute. Jackson was born and raised on a farm near Topeka, Kansas. After earning a BA in biology from Kansas Wesleyan University, an MA in botany from the University of Kansas, and a PhD in genetics from North Carolina State University, Wes Jackson established and served as chair of one of the United States' first environmental studies programs at California State University-Sacramento. Jackson then chose to leave academia, returning to his native Kansas, where he founded a non-profit organization, The Land Institute, in 1976. He is still head of The Land Institute, which currently describes its main goal as the development of Natural Systems Agriculture; it also publishes The Land Report, a newsletter about American sustainable agriculture and agrarianism. The Land Institute explored alternatives in appropriate technology, environmental ethics, and education, but a research program in sustainable agriculture eventually became central to its work. In 1978 Jackson proposed the development of a perennial polyculture. He sought to have fields planted in polycultures, more than one plant in a field, as in nature. Jackson also wanted to use perennials, which would not need to be replanted every year - that would leave the soil more intact, preventing erosion, and allowing important relationships between soil and plant to continue. The Land Institute attempts to breed plants not presently used in agriculture into effective producers of perennial grains in intercropping conditions. Jackson argued that this version of agriculture used "nature as model", and to pursue that end The Land Institute has studied prairie ecology. Entering its third decade, The Land Institute is beginning to demonstrate progress in developing the perennial crops called for in the Natural Systems Agriculture model. Programs in wheat, sorghum, and sunflower are generating crop lines displaying both perenniality and agriculturally-significant seed yield. Research on integrating these new plants into polycultures also continues. The Land Institute is not itself developing machinery suitable for one-pass harvesting of grain polycultures. It instead takes the position that integration of existing materials separation technology into harvesters is a straight-forward task, and will be accomplished by public and private agricultural engineers when the demand arrives. However, critics have pointed out that Jackson has spent millions in research funds without generating results that have had any impact on agriculture. Wes Jackson is the author of several books and is recognized as a leader in the international sustainable agriculture movement. In 1971, Wes Jackson's first efforts to address growing environmental concerns, react to social concerns growing from the Civil Rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, and answer student requests for more relevant materials resulted in the environmental reader, Man and the Environment. After leaving academia and establishing the Land Institute, Jackson published New Roots for Agriculture, partially in reaction to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office on soil erosion. This book expanded on ideas presented in an 1978 article, "Towards a Sustainable Agriculture," about looking to natural ecosystems, such as the prairie, to help solve the problem of soil erosion. He collaborated with author Wendell Berry, with whom Jackson has shared a longtime friendship and correspondence, on "Meeting the Expectations of the Land," in response to a Council on Agricultural Science and Technology report on agrochemicals. Jackson's Becoming Native to This Place, published in 1994, challenges readers to develop a relationship with their ecosystems and further develops the idea Natural Systems Agriculture. He was a 1990 Pew Conservation Scholar, in 1992 became a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2000 received the Right Livelihood Award. His work is often referred to by author Wendell Berry, with whom Jackson has shared a longtime friendship and correspondence.
- Wes Jackson ist ein US-amerikanischer Biologe. Jackson studierte Biologie und Botanik in Kansas und Genetik an der North Carolina State University. Er war Professor für Biologie an der Kansas Wesleyan und an der California State University in Sacramento. 1976 gründete er das "Land Institute", das hauptsächlich daran forscht, winterfestes, ertragreiches und ökologisch tragfähiges Getreide zu züchten, die Landwirtschaft durch den Einsatz mehrjähriger Nutzpflanzen nachhaltiger zu gestalten, Alternativen für den Einsatz fossiler Brennstoffe in der Landwirtschaft zu finden. Wes Jackson kritisiert die heutige Form der Landwirtschaft, die eine Reduzierung der genetischen Vielfalt, ein Auslaugen des Bodens und eine Zerstörung ländlicher Gegenden zur Folge hat. Seine Vision ist eine nachhaltige Landwirtschaft auf Basis mehrjähriger Pflanzen und alternativer Anbaumethoden. Wes ist Ratsmitglied des Weltzukunftsrats.
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