#kernza

[horsesarecreatures]

From Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet by George Monbiot

[rjzimmerman]

When wheat never dies

Could commercially perennial crops like Kernza be regenerative agriculture's holy grail?

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

Last summer, most of the fields surrounding Joel VanderSchaaf’s Prairie farm were baked and brown, withered by one of the most severe droughts in recent memory. One stood out among the rest: A plot the Saskatchewan potato farmer had planted on a whim three years earlier with an experimental grain called Kernza, similar to the wheat used to make bread and beer.

“Our crop was pretty much the only green field around that wasn’t irrigated,” he recalled. “It (Kernza) is very efficient, very hardy … we were quite pleased with how it was growing.”

Kernza is a perennial, which means, like a lawn, it regrows and produces grain every year without having to be replanted. Its extensive root system allows it to draw water and nutrients from deep beneath the ground. Its roots sequester carbon in the soil and boost soil health, making it a regenerative agriculture dream crop. Those environmental benefits are what first drew VanderSchaaf to the unusual crop.

Tim Crews is the chief scientist at the Land Institute, the Kansas-based research center that created Kernza. The organization is devoted to breeding perennial crops like wheat, rice, legumes, and oilseeds without using genetic engineering. It is also developing farming techniques that mimic natural grasslands in an attempt to regenerate Prairie farmland.

Nearly five decades after it was founded in 1976, the Land Institute is confident its efforts, bolstered by success stories like Kernza, demonstrate the “scientific feasibility” of perennial crops. Over the next 40 years, the team plans on crafting new farming methods that recreate the Prairie grasslands natural ecological stability while producing yields similar to conventional crops.

Under Crews’ leadership, the organization is also helping researchers in other countries develop perennial crops suited to their local needs. After years in the shadows, perennial agriculture is starting to catch people’s eye.

[eelhound]

"Most commercial crops are annual. They provide only one harvest and must be replanted every year. Growing these foods on an industrial scale usually takes huge amounts of water, fertilizer and energy, making agriculture a major source of carbon and other pollutants. Scientists say this style of farming has imperiled Earth’s soils, destroyed vital habitats and contributed to the dangerous warming of our world.

But Kernza — a domesticated form of wheatgrass developed by scientists at the nonprofit Land Institute — is perennial. A single seed will grow into a plant that provides grain year after year after year. It forms deep roots that store carbon in the soil and prevent erosion. It can be planted alongside other crops to reduce the need for fertilizer and provide habitat for wildlife.

In short, proponents say, it can mimic the way a natural ecosystem works — potentially transforming farming from a cause of environmental degradation into a solution to the planet’s biggest crises.

This summer I traveled to Kansas, where I met the scientists who are trying to make Kernza as hardy and fertile as traditional wheat. I visited the farmers who must figure out how to grow it effectively. And I invited my friend Jenny, the founder of artisan baking company Starrs Sourdough, to help me make a loaf of Kernza bread.

Kernza has a long road from the laboratory to the kitchen table. It will be even harder to transform the farming practices that humans have relied on for most of history. But if the scientists, farmers and processors are successful, perennial foods might one day be available on grocery store shelves — and the bread that Jenny and I are baking could offer a taste of what’s to come...

Research suggests that the world’s soils are now eroding 100 times faster than new soil can form, and an estimated 33 percent of soil is so degraded that its ability to grow crops is compromised. Meanwhile, monoculture — the strategy of sowing huge fields with a single crop — achieves higher yields but also puts more pressure on soil and increases the risk that plants will succumb to pests or disease.

Many of humanity’s solutions to these problems also create other issues, Land Institute researchers say. Fertilizer can counter soil degradation, but it pollutes waterways and produces nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Pesticides might reduce threats from insects, but they destroy other vital species. Cover crops will curb erosion, but they can be difficult to plant and maintain.

And modern farming is hugely carbon intensive. Factoring in fuel for machinery and food transport, methane produced by belching livestock, and the carbon that’s lost when ecosystems are converted to cropland, agriculture accounts for about a quarter of humanity’s annual planet-warming emissions.

Yet farms are also threatened by climate change, which will increase the risk of prolonged droughts and catastrophic floods.

In Kansas, one of the nation’s leading producers of wheat, these problems are on full display. The state loses an estimated 190 million tons of its rich topsoil each year. Climate change has made Kansas summers hotter and drier, but also makes rainstorms more intense. The state’s farmers are among those most at risk of losing crops as a consequence of human-caused warming.

'It’s a disaster,' Tim Crews, the Land Institute’s lead soil ecologist, tells me one damp day in June. Our shoes squelch in the mud as he leads me around the institute’s Salina, Kan., campus. As we talk, the rain is almost certainly destabilizing soil and washing it into surrounding streams.

Crews sweeps his hand out, as if to indicate not only the farm fields across the road but the entire U.S. agricultural system.

'This is the ecosystem that feeds us, and it has just been nuked,' Crews says. 'Is this really the best we can do?'

Land Institute scientists disagree about how to describe what they’re proposing. Is it a natural evolution from the past 10,000 years of annual agriculture? Or something more like a midcourse correction?

Rachel Stroer, the Land Institute’s president, calls it a 'paradigm shift.'

'Instead of an annual monoculture,' she says, 'we’re trying to create a perennial polyculture' — cultivating diverse mixes of long-lived plants.

'We want to create an agricultural system to feed humanity that uses nature as the measure of success.'

Before people started intensively farming here, Kansas boasted some of the richest soils on Earth. In native prairies, dozens of grass species intermingled with clover, wildflowers, lichens and shrubs, their roots extending as far as 15 feet into the ground. Periodic fires sparked by lightning or set by native people helped clear debris and promote new growth. Insects, birds, prairie dogs and buffalo foraged in the vegetation, while millions of munching microbes buried carbon and other nutrients deep in the earth.

'The ecosystems that built the soils upon which we eat today, and that we have degraded, were perennial and diverse,' Stroer says. 'That’s where we get those two characteristics that we’re trying to bring back into agriculture.'

Yet proponents of perennial polyculture have a problem: More than half of all calories consumed by people come from grains, and no one has ever domesticated a grain that lived beyond a year.

That challenge falls to plant biologists such as Lee DeHaan. The son of a Minnesota corn and soy grower, he’d heard family members talk about the Land Institute’s ideas with some skepticism.

'But it captivated me,' he says. 'I saw it as solving food for humans, environmental problems and financial security for farmers.'

He began experimenting with a wild grain known as Thinopyrum intermedium, or intermediate wheatgrass. Originally from the steppes of Europe and Asia, it had been brought to North America as forage for cattle, but scientists had a hunch it could also feed people.

In the early 2000s, Land Institute scientists planted their first plots of intermediate wheatgrass. When the plants matured, DeHaan and his colleagues selected the 1,000 top specimens to replant. And when those plants matured, they chose the best among them for further breeding. It was the same process that farmers have been using to domesticate crops for millennia.

To the scientists’ surprise, those early harvests were wildly successful. The new batch of plants had stronger stalks and bigger seeds that didn’t fall out of their husks before they could be harvested.

'We started to realize we were not that far away from something farmers could actually use,' DeHaan says.

'But the original domestication of crops took hundreds and thousands of years,' he adds. 'And with climate change, we don’t have that much time.'

So he turned to tools that were unavailable to his ancient predecessors: gene sequencing, artificial intelligence and advanced supercomputers. Once DeHaan identified the genetic markers associated with the traits he was looking for, he didn’t need to wait for the plants to fully mature before picking the best ones to breed.

After two decades and 11 cycles of this process, the Land Institute has domesticated a form of wheatgrass whose seeds are two to three times bigger than those of its wild ancestor. Under ideal conditions, it can provide as much as 30 percent of the yield of traditional wheat. They call their trademarked creation Kernza — an amalgamation of 'kernel' and 'Kansas.'

But the plant’s best qualities are below ground. DeHaan shows me a photograph of Kernza’s roots hanging in a Land Institute stairwell — the life-size image is so long, it takes up two stories. In the first four years after planting, Land Institute research suggests, a one-acre plot of Kernza will pull roughly 6.5 tons of carbon dioxide out of the air and into those deep roots.

Kernza can’t completely replace regular wheat — at least, not yet. As Jenny kneads our bread dough, she explains that the weaker gluten proteins in Kernza flour make it harder for loaves to hold their shape. And because Kernza grains are so small, the flour also has proportionally more bran, the hard outer coating of a grain. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing — bran is full of fiber, protein and other nutrients. But it’s not exactly ideal for making angel food cake. Still, mixed with an equal amount of whole-wheat bread flour, it’s shaping up to make a good-looking loaf.

Jenny places the dough inside a cast-iron cooking pot, which will help the bread bake evenly, and slides it into the hot, waiting oven... The proof will be in the eating. Jenny pulls our loaf from the oven, filling the kitchen with a tantalizing, yeasty smell.

'I’m excited that there’s movement in the idea of more sustainable agriculture,' she says. 'I hope this can prove there’s a market.'

Finally the bread is cool enough to cut into. Jenny takes a bite, tilts her head and chews. 'It tastes like —' she trails off, then tries again.

'Texturally, it’s like rye, but a little spongier,' she says. 'And it’s almost like it’s got a hint of herby or spicy-ness.'

She grins. 'It’s delicious.'

And we both grab another slice."

- Sarah Kaplan, from "A recipe for fighting climate change and feeding the world." Washington Post, 12 October 2021.

[currentsinbiology]

Kernza: Can This Breakfast Cereal Help Save The Planet? 

This past week in San Francisco, food writers and environmentalists gathered to taste some breakfast cereal.

This particular cereal had an ingredient — the milled seeds of a little-known plant called Kernza — that's the result of a radical campaign to reinvent agriculture and reverse an environmentally disastrous choice made by our distant ancestors.

The campaign began 40-some years ago with a scientist-environmentalist named Wes Jackson. He argued that humanity took a wrong turn, thousands of years ago, when it came to rely on crops like wheat and rice for basic sustenance. These "annual" crops need replanting each year, "which means that if you're going to get your seed to germinate, you've got to destroy the vegetation at the surface," clearing away anything that might compete with the fragile seedlings, Jackson said.

[breadfeed]

Kernza is a perennial wheatgrass developed by the Land Institute. It's a work-in-progress (and only time will tell what we should think of it) but as you can see in this video, The Perennial, a restaurant in San Fransisco is already using it to make nice bread.

[rjzimmerman]

A recipe for fighting climate change and feeding the world

It tastes like wheat but is much better for the planet.

Excerpt from this story from the Washington Post:

We’re standing in the tiny kitchen of my D.C. apartment, examining palmfuls of a dark, coarse, rich-scented flour. It’s unfamiliar because it was milled from Kernza, a grain that is fundamentally unlike all other wheat humans grow.

Most commercial crops are annual. They provide only one harvest and must be replanted every year. Growing these foods on an industrial scale usually takes huge amounts of water, fertilizer and energy, making agriculture a major source of carbon and other pollutants. Scientists say this style of farming has imperiled Earth’s soils, destroyed vital habitats and contributed to the dangerous warming of our world.

But Kernza — a domesticated form of wheatgrass developed by scientists at the nonprofit Land Institute — is perennial. A single seed will grow into a plant that provides grain year after year after year. It forms deep roots that store carbon in the soil and prevent erosion. It can be planted alongside other crops to reduce the need for fertilizer and provide habitat for wildlife.

In short, proponents say, it can mimic the way a natural ecosystem works — potentially transforming farming from a cause of environmental degradation into a solution to the planet’s biggest crises.

This summer I traveled to Kansas, where I met the scientists who are trying to make Kernza as hardy and fertile as traditional wheat. I visited the farmers who must figure out how to grow it effectively. And I invited my friend Jenny, the founder of artisan baking company Starrs Sourdough, to help me make a loaf of Kernza bread.

Kernza has a long road from the laboratory to the kitchen table. It will be even harder to transform the farming practices that humans have relied on for most of history. But if the scientists, farmers and processors are successful, perennial foods might one day be available on grocery store shelves — and the bread that Jenny and I are baking could offer a taste of what’s to come.

[tonyfitzgeraldphotography]

What Is Kernza? The Sustainable Perennial Grain Changing How We Bake Bread and Waffles

Updated: 1 minute Continue reading What Is Kernza? The Sustainable Perennial Grain Changing How We Bake Bread and Waffles

What Is Kernza? The Sustainable Perennial Grain Changing How We Bake Bread and Waffles

[rjzimmerman]

Patagonia’s Big Bet on a Modest Grain. (New York Times)

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

Regenerative agriculture is often promoted as a straightforward fix for farming, which is one of the world’s biggest sources of planet-warming emissions.

By using techniques like cover cropping and planting crops that absorb more carbon dioxide, proponents of regenerative agriculture say it has the potential to turn an everyday necessity into an ally in the fight against climate change.

But an article I published on Sunday makes it clear just how hard it will be for regenerative practices to go mainstream. In it, I detail how Patagonia, the clothing company based in California, is trying to popularize Kernza, a type of intermediate wheatgrass that can be used for brewing and baking.

Kernza, which can be used as a substitute for wheat, has roots that can stretch more than 10 feet into the ground, allowing it to absorb more carbon dioxide than many crops. And because Kernza is a perennial grain and doesn’t need to be replanted each year, it requires less water and fertilizer than traditional wheat, making it a boon for cost-conscious farmers.

“It’s just a way better way of doing things,” said Paul Lightfoot, the general manager of Patagonia’s food business. “Humanity isn’t doomed to do things in a way that ruins everything.”

Today Patagonia is using the grain as an ingredient in its beers, and a few other companies are using it in some products, including General Mills, which makes cereal featuring Kernza.

The market appears to be growing, too. Sales of regenerative agricultural products, which include Kernza, are growing 30 percent annually, according to Circana, a market research company, which expects the market for the category to reach $11 billion to $16 billion annually by 2032. Big food companies — including PepsiCo, Hormel, Nestle and McDonald’s — have begun dabbling in regenerative practices.

Still, hardly anyone knows about Kernza. Current production is minuscule, with fewer than 4,000 acres planted in the United States, compared with more than 47 million acres of wheat.

California came up with a definition for what constituted “regenerative” this year, but the process was fraught with debate and some critics say the term remains too vague.

What’s more, there are real questions about whether Kernza is actually good for the planet. Whatever gains it might produce in terms of carbon sequestration and reduced water and fertilizer usage are tiny compared with the colossal volumes of planet-warming gasses being pumped into the atmosphere by the relentless burning of fossil fuels. And the yield from an acre of Kernza is still just a fraction of the yield from an acre of wheat.

“The problem with Kernza is that it makes one-third as much grain per acre as wheat, and that means it needs three times as much land to make the same amount of grain,” said Michael Grunwald, author of “We Are Eating the Earth,” a new book that is critical of regenerative agriculture. “That’s environmentally disastrous.”