Fred Iutzi is Working to Develop Kernza, a Sustainable Perennial Grain That Could Feed a Growing World Population
Publication: Nation's Restaurant News
Author: Bret Thorn
“The problem that agriculture has faced for 10,000 years is it started with the wrong hardware,” Fred Iutzi, president of The Land Institute, a research organization in Salina, Kan., told attendees of the 2018 Menus of Change conference at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.
He was referring to the fact that all the grains we grow and eat, which make up most of the calories we consume, are annual plants. We need to replant them each year, and each time we do that we lose a little topsoil. Over time, the land becomes useless, people go hungry and civilizations crumble — some people theorize that soil erosion was a contributing factor to the fall of the Roman Empire.