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In 35 years spent advocating for sustainable agriculture, renewable energy and other initiatives, Jackson had never seen more movement on and awareness of environmental issues.
He hopes it was just the beginning.
There’s a convergence here,” Jackson said in an interview Friday. “This is not typical, us limping along in our usually environmental sort of way. We have the potential now for a critical mass to develop.”
The author of several books, including “Becoming Native to This Place,” Jackson was recognized for his work in 1992 as a MacArthur Fellow.
Jackson will be in Winona on Tuesday for an afternoon discussion and an evening lecture at Winona State University, as part of the university’s Lyceum Series. The lecture, “Replacing the Industrial Mind,” is intended to be an interactive discussion on challenging the preconceptions associated with advancing technology.
“What’s interesting is Americans will embrace technology without skepticism,” Jackson said. “At the same time, they will turn around and be suspicious of science.”
That’s science as in evolution, global warming and rapid growth of the human population. And technology as in everything from automobiles that emit carbon dioxide to the millions of pounds of chemicals farmers apply to fields each year.
The goal, Jackson said, is to show people that using environmental resources — the “extractive economy,” he calls it — as deficit spending. Like paying off your credit card with other credit cards.
Once people see that, he said, the next step is finding ways to pay off the debt while curbing spending.
The 70-year-old Jackson, who has degrees in biology, botany and genetics, co-founded the Land Institute in Kansas in 1976. The nonprofit is dedicated to solving the “problem of agriculture” by reversing a trend that began more than 11,000 years ago: cultivating annual crops.
Scientists there have been working for nearly 30 years to cross-breed annual crops like wheat with perennials with the goal of creating hybrids —annual crops with deep perennial root systems. Such crops would cut down on tilling and planting, and thus fertilizer use and soil erosion, and would create a sustainable system.
Those are some big-picture plans — Jackson figures it’ll be another 30 to 50 years before the Institute can introduce its first successful annual/perennial hybrid.
Still, he doesn’t consider himself an optimist and consciously avoids the term. There’s really no reason to be anything when you can do instead, he said. He hopes Tuesday to convey the benefits of doing — holding teach-ins, lobbying politicians, or just asking questions about existing systems.
“Rather than talk about optimism, hope, whatever — we just gotta plunge ahead and not count on miracles in the usual sense,” he said. “There’s just work to do.”
Then he gave an example:
“You’re driving down the road 80 miles per hour and take your hands off the wheel, even though there are curves coming up. It doesn’t pay to be optimistic. It only pays to take control of the wheel.”
Reporter Brian Voerding can be reached at (507) 453-3514 or at bvoerding@winonadailynews.com
