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.
Truths We Can’t Bear Alone: Facing an ‘Inconvenient Apocalypse’
In the face of multiple cascading crises, we have to tell as much of the truth as one can bear, then a little more, and then all the rest of the truth, whether one can bear it or not.
October 6, 2022
The Politics of Overconsumption and Getting the Scale Right
No matter how difficult the transition may be, in the not too distant future we will have to live in far smaller and more flexible social organizations than today’s nation-states and cities.
October 3, 2022
Knowledge versus Ignorance: The Limited Scope of Human Competence
We need to be better students of the exits so that when things go wrong, as they always do and always will, we can find our way out.
August 18, 2022
An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Excerpt
All organisms adapt to, and are shaped by, their places. There is no reason that humans should be exempt from that observation.
July 28, 2022
Why is this not enough?
One of the universal characteristics of Homo sapiens seems to be that we are a meaning-seeking species. Across time, place, and circumstance, human beings try to figure out what it all means, or doesn’t mean.
July 26, 2022
Earth Day: Enemies and Opportunities
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.”
April 20, 2022