The way we grow food has been broken for 10,000 years (but we can fix it)

“I think the fate of humanity ultimately rests on how we conserve and protect that thin, magical layer of soil on this planet” – David Van Tassel

David Van Tassel is a lead scientist at The Land Institute, a non-profit research, education, and policy organization dedicated to sustainable agriculture.

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and David discuss Agriculture 101 (3:00); the impact of agriculture on the formation of society (25:00); farming, modernity, and the Green Revolution (39:00); The Land Institute and the push to develop perennial staple plants (47:00); and politics and the long game of sustainable agriculture (1:13:00).

Notable Links:

• Perennial plant
• Annual plant
• Green Revolution
• Evolutionary biology (subfield of biology)
• Sexual selection (mode of natural selection)
• Origin of domestic dogs
• Monoculture (agricultural practice)
• Polyculture (agricultural practice)
• Kernza (perennial grass)
• Silphium (perennial sunflower)
• Upland rice (type of rice)
• Japonica rice (type of rice)
• Indica rice (type of rice)
• Columbian Exchange
• Farmers of Forty Centuries, by F.H. King (book)
• Wes Jackson (Founder and President, The Land Institute)
• Nature as Measure, by Wes Jackson (book)
• Maya Civilization (ancient civilization)
• Anasazi (ancient civilization)
• Mesopotamia (historical region)
• Ancient Egyptian agriculture
• Jerry Glover (soil scientist at The Land Institute)
• Scree (geological feature)
• Loess (type of soil)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

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