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.
Podcast from the Prairie: Respecting your Tools
By Robert Jensen, Wes Jackson, Podcast from the Prairie
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.
Podcast from the Prairie: Intellectual Grounding
By Robert Jensen, Wes Jackson, Podcast from the Prairie
Welcome to “Podcast from the Prairie.” Wes Jackson, one of the founders of the sustainable agriculture movement, tells stories that take us from lessons learned growing up on a Kansas farm to the front lines of crucial debates about ecological crises and social struggles
Let’s get ‘creaturely’: A new worldview can help us face ecological crises
By Wes Jackson, Robert Jensen, Resilience.org
We argue for the Creaturely based not just on time but more importantly on the greater creativity and efficiency of nature’s ecosystems, compared with the limited vision and mixed record of human cleverness.
Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, Mary Berry in Conversation
By Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, Mary Berry, Schumacher Center for a New Economics
The problem of sustainability is simple enough to state. It requires that the fertility cycle of birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay—what Albert …
Nature’s Way: A Path to Ecological Agriculture
By Wes Jackson, Allen White, The Great Transition
Allen White and Wes Jackson explore a new agricultural paradigm that mimics rather than contradicts ecological principles.
The Serious Challenge of Our Time
By Wes Jackson, Resilience.org
We are now forced to address the legality of ecological exploitation if we are to achieve the high law of morality to protect our ecosphere.
Food: Tackling the oldest environmental problem: Agriculture and its impact on soil
By Wes Jackson, Post Carbon Institute
I want to talk about the 10,000-year-old problem of agriculture and how it is both necessary and possible to solve it. Were it necessary but not possible this idea would be grandiose, and were it possible but not necessary it would be grandiose. But it has passed the test of grandiosity.
The 50-year farm bill
By Wes Jackson, Solutions
We need new strategies for agriculture that emphasize efficient nutrient use in order to lower production costs and minimize negative environmental effects. The trouble is, the best soils on the best landscapes are already being farmed. Much of the future expansion of agriculture will be onto marginal lands where the risk of irreversible degradation under annual grain production is high. As these areas become degraded, expensive chemical, energy, and equipment inputs will become less effective and much less affordable.