A handful of experimental fields promise to rewrite how we grow food. The question is whether the economics ever add up.
On a winter morning in Kansas, the most disruptive crop in modern agriculture does not look like much.
Instead of tall amber waves of wheat, the plants in The Land Institute’s plots resemble ordinary prairie grass – thin stems, sparse seed heads, a scruffy stand against the wind. Yet these perennials, bred into a grain called Kernza, are trying to solve a problem that runs far deeper than the soil’s surface.
