Comment by russnewcomer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by russnewcomer | Hacker News Reader

One of the other important things about Kernza that the article doesn't talk about much is hardiness and drought-resistance. Kernza's yield at its best is lower than modern seed at an average year, but during a drought year, their yields are a probably lot closer. (They haven't been able to do extensive enough tests to confirm this, if I remember correctly) That's a huge win, especially because of potential problems with the Ogalalla Aquifer in the coming years.

Another advantage, unmentioned in the article, is that it is easily possible to grow Kernza in a backyard with little intervention, and have enough grain to make a loaf of bread a week, or a couple pizza crusts. You need a mill, sure, but hand powered mills are pretty cheap ($50 for one that will work for the amount of Kernza you'll probably grow in your backyard), and in the midwest, your local library might have one to borrow. You might need a specialty mill, I'm not sure, my dad bought one of the heavy $500 hand mills when I was a kid and it had no problem with some Kernza.

I grew up in Salina, where the Land Institute is headquartered, and tangentially know some of the people mentioned in the article, so while I'm not an expert, I am a semi-interested lay person.

> it is easily possible to grow Kernza in a backyard with little intervention

As someone who hates mowing lawns, this is really interesting.

On the other hand, you could eat your lawn if you were inclined to mow it.

I had the fortune to see Wes Jackson from the Land Institute give a presentation about his research breeding prairie grass attributes back into cereals. He explained the goal of developing perennial hybrids that could make agriculture somewhat less dependent on energy-intensive annual crops. He also brought in a tuft of 1 meter tall grass, showing how its ~3 meter deep root system would do wonders to retain water and reduce flooding on Mississippi downstream.

Here's more information from The Land Institute about Kernza: https://landinstitute.org/our-work/perennial-crops/kernza/

I did a bit of hunting and wasn't able to find it available for purchase but when it is, would love to replace a chunk of the frontyard.

FWIU most of the ogalalla problems wouldn't be problems if we replaced just the non-human-feed corn with almost literally anything else.

My understanding is that it is only that simple if you are discussing consumption of the aquifer, but that there are other factors related to replacement, geographical size and distribution of the aquifer, that changing what we grow won't necessarily fix.

Here is some recent news on replacement:

"So far, among the many things Dahlke has found: Ninety percent of her floodwaters reach the groundwater table; in the right soil, alfalfa can handle the equivalent of 26 feet of rain; and pecan trees, which, she says, “naturally grow in riparian [riverbank] soils, are well-adapted to having wet feet in winter.”"

https://www.popsci.com/how-california-is-saving-rainwater-fo...

"corn averages roughly 15 million calories per acre"

"wheat comes in at about 4 million calories per acre, soy at 6 million"

What else would you have them feed their animals? Calories per acre matters when there are a limited number of acres of arable land.

Unless you are advocating vegetarianism. Which is a valid point as far as the environment goes. But farmers produce what the market demands.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-...

Hay, alfalfa, basically anything for stock feed, almost nothing for ethonal production. Corn is a particularly water thirsty crop, which while delicious is over produced. Calories per acre is important but for the Ogalalla Aquifer calories per gallon-water is more important.

Hay is alfalfa once it has been harvested. It is high in fiber, and cows are great at digesting fiber, but they also need sugars to convert into milk. Oats provide protein and fiber. Corn provides sugars and iirc, fiber(maybe protein? its getting late here). There has been quite a bit of research about optimum ratios. I could look for some if you are interested, I get most of my info from my dad's dead tree magazines.

And I hear you about ethanol production. I for one can't wait for our new renewable energy sources.

"Corn is a particularly water thirsty crop, which while delicious is over produced"

Sweet corn, which we eat; and field corn are different things. According to the washington post article I posted earlier, there isn't that much sweet corn produced.

"Calories per acre is important but for the Ogalalla Aquifer calories per gallon-water is more important"

Yeah, but people want food today... Desalination, and other water related technologies can't come soon enough :(

>your local library might have one to borrow.

Why would you find mills in a library? What else do they have..

A lot of libraries don't just share books. For instance some let you check out laptops, wifi devices, etc. There are also tool libraries, and even seed libraries.

You might be surprised by what's available at your local library these days.

Seeds too. My local library has a bunch of different types of plant seeds, mainly foods. The idea is you take seeds in the spring, plant and grow them, harvest them, and then preserve the seeds and return them to the library to be "borrowed" by another person the next year. They have the seeds in an old card catalog case, and each drawer has the plant name on the outside and a color green, yellow, or red, indicating how easy or hard it is to save the seeds.

Toys! Our local library has tons of toys to checkout. Been great to give our small child who likes new things for a while a semi-constant stream of new toys, that are in better shape or fancier than the $1 garage sale toys he usually gets.

Tools. There's a library-affiliated technology library[0] in the city I live now that has almost anything someone who is a 'maker' could want. And many large town (25-60k towns) libraries have similar, smaller scale departments.

[0] http://www.dospace.org/

My local library has at the very least books, videos, music, jigsaw puzzles, and museum passes. That's just the stuff that's obviously visible from the entrance.

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