Climate-friendly crops are getting more attention from farmers and food companies as pressure mounts to find sustainable forms of agriculture. Enter Kernza, a new grain that’s already got powerful backers like General Mills Inc. and the support of academia. Kernza is a wheat-like grain that can be used in breads, cereals, or even served as a pilaf like rice. It’s also a perennial crop, which means it can be seeded once and then grown for multiple years. It helps the environment by sequestering carbon in the soil through its deep root system and requires fewer chemical inputs.
Why does nice dirt matter? Because it means a lot less synthetic fertilizer going into the ground, reducing the chances for chemical run off and restoring the soil’s natural organic matter. Think of the “dead zone” for marine life in the Gulf of Mexico, caused partly by fertilizer runoff from U.S. agriculture.
The rich soil reflects Kernza’s deep root system, which is able to form because the crop is sown just once every five years or so. That’s in contrast to major staples like corn and wheat, annual crops that are replanted every season and contribute to soil erosion, nutrient depletion and other environmental issues.
The University of Minnesota has been working with scientists from a non-profit group in Kansas called the Land Institute to develop Kernza, which is being domesticated from a wild, perennial wheatgrass. The university is releasing its first commercial Kernza seeds to U.S. farmers this summer, funded in part by General Mills.
For Fred Iutzi, president of the Land Institute, the work is helping to fix a problem that started about 10,000 years ago at agriculture’s dawn.