Perennial Grain Crops Offer Hope of Productivity and Conservation

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Kernza is the world’s first commercially grown perennial grain crop. Developers are hoping to prove that maximizing crop productivity while being climate-smart can be done simultaneously.

Schlautman… “We want to be able to produce grain crops like that and use the crops themselves to accomplish both sort of the productivity goals that we have. We want to have high yields of grain that can be fed to humans or used for other purposes, while also accomplishing the conservation goals that we have as humanity as we move forward with the same exact species.”

That’s Dr. Brandon Schlautman, co-founder and chief science officer of Sustain-A-Grain, who says in the future cropland may not need to be taken out of production to revive the soil.

Schlautman… “In an agriculture setting, we often think of the conservation reserve program, the CRP program, where lots of agricultural cropland has been taken out of production and what do they plant it to? They plant it to mixtures of native, sometimes nonnative perennial species that do an excellent job holding the soil in place, building back that soil organic matter, filtering water, etc., so we want to mimic the CRP plantings while producing a grain crop.”

Learn more about perennial grains at sustainagrain.com