Wes Jackson is one of the foremost figures in the international sustainable agriculture movement. Co-founder and president emeritus of The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, he has pioneered research in Natural Systems Agriculture — including perennial grains, perennial polycultures, and intercropping — for over 40 years. He was a professor of biology at Kansas Wesleyan and later established the Environmental Studies program at California State University, Sacramento, where he became a tenured full professor. He is the author of several books including Consulting the Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture (2011), Becoming Native to This Place (1994), Altars of Unhewn Stone (1987), and New Roots for Agriculture (1980). Wes is a Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute.
Earth Day: Enemies and Opportunities
By Wes Jackson, Robert Jensen, Common Dreams
In a 1970 poster for the first Earth Day and a cartoon the following year, Walt Kelly's Pogo offered a hard truth about ecological crises: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Wes Jackson, “Methodism to My Madness”: A “Podcast from the Prairie” Conversation
By Robert Jensen, Wes Jackson, Resilience.org
We’re all responsible for our choices, of course, and I’m not excusing bad behavior or mean-spirited politics. But I do not blame Kansans for our predicament so much as I blame the power structure that takes care of itself without caring about the ecological and economic catastrophe out our way.
Podcast from the Prairie: The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson
By Wes Jackson, Robert Jensen, Podcast from the Prairie
In this final episode of the first season of “Podcast from the Prairie,” Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen reverse roles. Jackson asks the questions about Jensen’s new book, The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson: Searching for Sustainability, which summarizes key ideas from Jackson’s work over the past half-century.
Podcast from the Prairie: “Hogs Are Up: Stories of the Land, with Digressions”
By Wes Jackson, Robert Jensen, Podcast from the Prairie
In this penultimate episode of the first season of “Podcast from the Prairie,” Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen discuss Jackson’s new book, Hogs Are Up: Stories of the Land, with Digressions.
Podcast from the Prairie: “The Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man”
By Robert Jensen, Wes Jackson, Podcast from the Prairie
In this episode of “Podcast from the Prairie,” Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen discuss the creativity of both humans and the larger living world.
Podcast from the Prarie: Methodism in my madness
By Robert Jensen, Wes Jackson, Podcast from the Prairie
In this episode of “Podcast from the Prairie,” Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen discuss the role of religion, both in Jackson’s life and in our human future.
Transforming life on our home planet, perennially
By Wes Jackson, Aubrey Streit Krug, Bill Vitek, Robert Jensen, Resilience.org
With nearly eight billion people on the planet, we aren’t going back to hunting and gathering. But around the world, often under the banner of agroecology, people are using modern science and traditional knowledge to develop ways of farming that are less ecologically and socially destructive.
Podcast from the Prairie: Mad About Science
By Wes Jackson, Robert Jensen, Podcast from the Prairie
In Episode 3, titled “Mad about Science,” host Robert Jensen asks Wes how formal science differs from, and is similar to, the folk science he learned on the farm growing up.