In the inaugural episode of Podcast from the Prairie, Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen explored some of the key influences on Jackson’s distinctive philosophy, on how he came to embrace an ecological perspective and a “creaturely worldview.” In Episode 2, “Respecting Your Tools,” the focus is on the jobs Jackson has had in his life and what lessons he learned along the way. The story starts with work on farms and ranches while growing up, before Jackson became a welder to pay for college. After graduating, Jackson taught at a high school and then a college and university. In 1976, Jackson gave up the security of a tenured faculty position at a California university to return to Kansas and take a gamble on starting an alternative school, The Land Institute, that led to internationally recognized research on sustainable agriculture. In this episode, Jackson reflects on the importance of honoring the people and tools one works with, on the sweat and joy that comes in committing fully to a task, and the kind of work necessary if there is to be a sustainable future.
Related Articles
Agrihouse at the Venice Architecture Biennale: cultivating climate resilience through land, water and collective policy
When farmers, researchers, designers and policymakers work together, farms and bio districts can become true laboratories of resilience – capable of regenerating ecosystems while shaping fairer and more adaptive governance models.
February 25, 2026
Bus Driver on Mars
To live outside of one’s ecological context—and in fact where no ecology of any relevance exists—would require somehow creating a suitable ecology, or borrowing a sufficiently-complete subset of an existing one that can tolerate a completely novel setting for which the beings are not adapted.
February 25, 2026
The EU confirms: it’s time for STRATEGIC adaptation
Deep as we now are, tragically, in the age of consequences, only a more deeply deliberately transformative effort at responding smartly to the damage that is here and preparing for the unpredictably worse damage that is to come has any chance of being sufficient.
February 25, 2026
