The long road to perennial cereals

Why are there no perennial grain crops? That’s the provocative question posed by a recent paper in Evolutionary Applications written by three scientists working at The Land Institute. ((Van Tassel, D., DeHaan, L., & Cox, T. (2010). Missing domesticated plant forms: can artificial selection fill the gap? Evolutionary Applications DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-4571.2010.00132.x)) Whose institutional mission, of …

High Plains Drifting

Wheat being nudged and prodded into perenniality, and local perennials the other way ((That’s the Land Institute stuff we’ve blogged about before.)); cows managed like bison, and bison managed like cows (including by media moguls turned restauranteurs); reenactments of Custer’s Last Stand, and Indian retirees going home to the reservation; farmers paid to retire some …