Photo from Land Institute website
Kernza, a wheatgrass, is a distant relative of regular wheat. It doesn’t produce nearly as much seed as wheat, but it’s a perennial. The roots go deep into the earth, survive the winter, and send up fresh green stems every spring. This grain grows like grass on the prairie, protecting the soil, taking carbon from the air and storing it in the earth whereas tilling the soil releases vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. The Land Institute is developing larger seeds.
You can now buy cereal, crackers, flour, crisps and bread made of Kernza. Here’s hoping that it will grow (pardon the pun) even more popular. The Land Institute is now domesticating silphium, which has the potential to be at least as productive as the oilseed sunflower in favorable environments. A post about that later.
www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/04/13/711144729/can-this-breakfast-cereal-help-save-the-planet