Wes Jackson is a visionary. He is a man who is ahead of his time, a potent academic, philosopher and writer and founder of The Land Institute. His genius has not gone unnoticed, and his name is found on a list of the 100 most influential Americans of this century, published by Time-Life Magazine. He is also the recipient of a $U.S.335,000 MacArthur Fellowship

I first met Wes Jackson on his visit to Australia in 1992. I had read enough of his work to know this would be an occassion not to miss. At the invitation of Ted Lefroy, from the WA Department of Agriculture, I joined Ted and Wes for a three day trip through the Western Australian wheat belt. In the Australian winter of the following year I travelled to Salina, Kansas, to deliver a talk at The Prairie Festival, an annual event at The Land Institute.

The main activity at The Land Institute is research into 'perennial agriculture'. The mid western states, including Kansas, were a vast prairie of perennial grasses and legumes. The grass dominated plant mixture of the prairie, growing on some of the richest soils known, supported huge herds of buffalo and deer. Anyone who has seen 'Dances with wolves' may remember the scene where the buffalo pass by in such enormous numbers that they cause a thunderous roar and the earth shakes. When they have passed there is a swath where the grasses have been flattened and the soil compressed. The soil, in its natural healthy state is elastic, and will quickly spring back to its former condition. The buffalo, having eaten or trampled all the feed, are unlikely to return until the ecosystem of the prairie has recovered.

Under the agricultural regime, the praire has been replaced with annual grasses and crops. They require annual cultivation, perhaps many passes with mechanised equipment, and soils are left completely bare of cover for part of the year. This constant assault destroys the natural health and elasticity of soil. The famous dust bowl of the 1930's was the direct result of changed utilisation and poor management of these productive grasslands. Since that time, the U.S. Soil Conservation Service and the Department of Agriculture have poored much research effort and extension into the prairie. There are now thousands of kilometres of contour banks, grass strips and other works to prevent erosion and everyone has access to good advice on improved farming methods.

Despite this effort, soil loss continues at between 5 and 9 tons of soil per acre. Fifty years of soil conservation has, it seems, failed to prevent degradation of the resource at an unsustainable rate.

Wes Jackson lays the blame for this squarely at the feet of agriculture. The annual crops on which we depend require annual cultivations which pound the life out of soil. The energy subsidies which we pour into agriculture, in the form of fuel for the tractors, irrigation, pesticides and fertilisers allow us to continue to produce yields, but the system is unsustainable compared to the persistence of the native prairies which endured for so long before white settlement.