Nonprofit journalism dedicated to creating a Human Age we actually want to live in.

By Emma Bryce

Disguised within an ordinary-looking bowl of pasta before me is a brand new ingredient, 20 years in the making, that many believe could single-handedly slash emissions, store carbon in the soil, and help the wider environment.

The neat fusilli coils contain flour ground from Kernza, a perennial wheat-like crop that produces multiple harvests from one plant, year after year after year. I received some cooking instructions to get the best out of the novel ingredient: “Don’t cover it up with a bunch of sauce! Make sure you can taste it,” says Lee DeHaan, a scientist at The Land Institute, a nonprofit agriculture research organization based in Salina, Kansas, that developed the Kernza grain. I follow his guidance, drizzling in a little olive oil and a pinch of salt, and then take a bite, letting the pasta’s flavors emerge: a subtle but unmistakable hint of cinnamon, followed by nutmeg. It’s unexpectedly warm and earthy, like a salute to the rich Kansas soils that Kernza first sprouted from.

The way this crop was raised there was very different from that of its cousin, conventional wheat. Wheat is an annual crop, like rice and corn, which together account for almost half of the calories humanity consumes. Annuals must be planted and harvested anew each year, a system that requires farmers to heap fertilizers and herbicides onto the land, dispersed by gas-guzzling machinery that bloats agriculture’s carbon footprint. Meanwhile, repeated cycles of tilling and replanting strips the soil of nutrients, and loses vital topsoil to wind and rain. Over time, those soils may degrade, pushing farmers onto new land in search of fertile ground. 

Each mouthful of this Kernza-rich pasta, on the other hand, supports farming that locks topsoil in place and stores carbon in the earth. More and more researchers, farmers, and producers believe that perennial crops have unmatched potential to reform agriculture’s warped system, and are pinning their hopes—and research dollars—on the likes of Kernza to deliver that. The grain is now cultivated across 4,000 acres of land, by over 100 farmers across the US Midwest and as far afield as Sweden and France. Its distinct aromas have made their way into craft beers, cereals, crackers, and whiskey, and have been embraced by major brands such as Patagonia. 

As a potential substitute for wheat, which covers more global land area than any other commercial crop, Kernza seems to herald a wholesome, low-carbon revolution in the vast agricultural sector. And yet 15 years since the first stands took root, the crop has managed to capture only a tiny fraction of the market, a victim of limited yields, government regulation, and a conservative farming industry. So can Kernza ever displace traditional amber waves of grain, or is it doomed to be a perennial runner-up? 

From trees to flowers to shrubs, perenniality is nature’s default. Just six percent of all plant species are natural annuals. But in agriculture, we’ve turned that on its head. Many of the crops that shaped modern farming, such as common wheat (Triticum aestivum), were domesticated from perennial ancestors. In the process, our ancestors swapped ecological benefits for higher yields. “It shouldn’t be a trade-off, we should be able to grow our food and improve the soil and habitat,” says DeHaan, the tall, sandy-haired lead scientist on the Kernza domestication program. He spends much of his time inspecting the Kernza growing in the 40-acre fields about 20 minutes’ drive down the road from his office.

This morning he sits at his desk, and standing sentry beside him is a towering dried bouquet of Kernza, whose lush blond fronds rise almost two feet above regular wheat. The statuesque plant is the result of a program that DeHaan has spearheaded at The Land Institute since 2003 to domesticate intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium), a wild, perennial cousin of wheat. In this ongoing process, DeHaan and colleagues hunt for plants showing favorable traits such as large or numerous seeds, and cross-pollinate the most promising candidates with one another. Years of this manual, non-GMO breeding have produced Kernza, a crop that retains its perenniality but produces more grain than its parent plants. Such selective breeding has doubled Kernza’s yields in 10 years.

Like other perennials, Kernza offers a tantalizing ecological alternative to industrial crops, starting with carbon use and storage. “Between nitrogen and monster tractors, and every other thing that goes into [agriculture], it is an absolute fossil fuel bonanza going on out there. And there are not very many options for backing out of that, shy of creating an agriculture that is far more like the rest of the ecosystem,” says Timothy Crews, director of the International Program at The Land Institute. 

Because perennial grasses grow for many years, they develop a dense, beard-like tangle of roots that reaches deeper into the ground than those of annuals. Meters below ground, there is less turnover and less decomposition, locking down carbon for longer—possibly even permanently. Perennial crops also require less tilling than annual agriculture, leaving the soil and its diverse microorganisms undisturbed—both of which help to maintain soil carbon. “Those two things—stabilizing soil structure and growing deep abundant roots—cause a greater carbon accumulation,” says Crews. 

A single, firm estimate of precisely how much accumulation proves elusive, as the rate of carbon sequestration of a plant can vary drastically, depending on environmental and other factors. But some insights have come from comparing Kernza with other crops grown under the same field conditions. For example, fields of Kernza growing adjacent to plots of annual grains accumulated an average of 0.4 tonnes more carbon per hectare per year, for 10 years. (Numbers will differ by landscape and crop type—for instance, higher Kernza carbon values have been shown in cooler, wetter climes, says Crews.)

Looking beyond Kernza, Crews calculated overall perennial carbon storage by drawing data from dozens of studies. He estimates that if all land currently under annual grain crops were converted to perennial agriculture, the soil could accumulate between 0.42 and 1.80 billion tons of carbon each year, for 30 years after conversion. The higher figure would be equivalent to sequestering almost twice the annual emissions of global aviation. 

But perennials have more to offer an ecosystem than carbon storage alone, Crews says. They can also scrub the soils of polluting fertilizer and keep freshwater clean. Research in China showed that wheat had the lowest fertilizer-use efficiency of major grains. This contributes to the 75 million tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer that runs off from croplands each year, driving downstream eutrophication and a biodiversity crisis in rivers, lakes, and seas. Large, long-lived perennial root systems like Kernza’s, on the other hand, capture much more of the fertilizer that would otherwise slip away. According to one study, Kernza reduced the amount of nitrate leaching into the soil by two orders of magnitude, compared to maize. “It is a solution to dead zones,” says Crews. “There are many eutrophic water bodies, with phosphorus or nitrogen loss, that are curbed substantially with these perennials.”

Perennials also stabilize the soil, helping to build up layers of organic matter that accumulate nutrients and retain water, and support rich microbial communities. Additional research by Crews shows that the microbial communities below Kernza are comparable to wild native grasslands.

For Crews, one perk really stands out, and it is increasingly the reason why researchers and farmers from Japan to Ukraine seek out the grain: perennials help slow the erosion of critical topsoils. “That’s arguably the biggest, in some long term ways,” he says. Under annual agriculture, soils are left exposed and vulnerable to erosion for stretches of time. This is part of the reason scientists estimate that one-third of global soils have a lifespan of less than 200 years. 

Kernza’s ability to lock soil in place is what first drew Brandon Kaufman to the grain. In the U.S. Midwest, soil is reported to be eroding 10 times quicker than it forms. When Kaufman, a fifth generation farmer in McPherson County, Kansas glances back at historic photographs of the land he inherited from his grandfather, he says the change is notable: “It’s almost embarrassing, the loss of soil and the erosion, due to the way we’ve been farming,” he says. “We’re on a downhill slope, and I don’t think anybody has a silver bullet. But I’m trying something different.” 

Six years after he started trialing Kernza, the 200 acres where he grows the crop have remained under near-constant coverage. When harvest season is over, Kaufman, like many farmers, leaves the crop to grow as forage for his cows. It hasn’t all been plain-sailing—there have been variable harvests from year to year—but he’s been able to gather grain for two or three years running. “We’re not disturbing the soil and tilling that environment anymore. We don’t have wind erosion, we don’t have water erosion,” Kaufman says. 

As Kaufman puts it, he’s trying to “mimic Mother Nature,” which is what Kernza is designed to do by returning features of prairie ecosystems to the land. To tackle the vast ecological footprint of food production, including its carbon emissions, “you need an agriculture that grows itself a lot more like the natural ecosystems on the rest of the planet,” argues Crews. “And that is a perennial cropping system.”

So why aren’t we tearing up fields of wheat and replacing them with Kernza? Because despite the grain’s exponential yield growth in the last decade, yields are at best a quarter of wheat’s, and can’t compete economically. 

Adding to the financial burden, Kernza is a smaller grain whose husk requires a different type of processing. “Processors don’t like that, so they’re gonna charge you sometimes ten times the price [compared to wheat],” DeHaan says. Overall, Kernza’s costs are roughly nine times higher than that of wheat. 

And there’s another challenge. Kernza’s gluten content is naturally lower than wheat’s, reducing the starchiness needed to make bread and many other wheat-based foods. For the time being, “that’s going to inhibit a takeover of wheat directly,” adds Crews. 

Kernza represents a vanishingly small fraction of today’s wheat market, and this plays on DeHaan’s mind: “People have tried to introduce new crops over and over again, and they have almost always failed,” he says. “That’s because it’s really hard to get something to the scale where it becomes cost-efficient.” 

There are some hopeful perennial examples to look to. A guiding north star is the Chinese perennial rice, developed by Chinese scientists crossing an annual Asian rice with a perennial African relative. That work resulted in a perennial grain that now flourishes across 37,000 acres in South Asia and Africa and that, in 2022, reached the same yields as annual rice: “We’re talking six or seven tons of rice per harvest, twice a year, for four years. It is miraculous,” says Crews. Field trials across three sites in China showed that the soil has been accumulating almost one ton of organic carbon per hectare of land, per year, since transitioning to perennial rice. Farmers now spend 50% less on inputs including fertilizer, and their income increased by between 17% and 161%. “For us, it’s a wonderful case study that shows it is possible to have a perennial grain, no matter how you arrive at it. There’s not an inherent trade off in a plant being perennial and high yielding,” says Crews.

But not everyone is sure that a similar story will unfold for Kernza. “The question is, could or should Kernza be considered a replacement for annual wheat, or its own type of grain?” says Jacob Jungers, an assistant professor of agronomy and plant genetics at the University of Minnesota. Jungers leads Kernza-CAP, a $10 million research project funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). It brings together agricultural scientists, growers, food scientists, policy and supply chain experts, to explore Kernza’s potential in the US. 

What they’ve learned so far is that Kernza has a range of willing buyers despite—and sometimes because of—its unique features. For instance, Kernza-CAP has partnered with Patagonia Provisions, a sustainable foods-focused offshoot of the clothing retailer, to develop new beers from Kernza’s aromatic grains at 20 craft breweries in the US. Meanwhile, Kernza’s higher price point hasn’t proved a barrier to some artisanal and premium brands now producing cereals, pasta, and baked goods with the grain, and championing its environmental credentials. Similarly, Kaufman has co-launched Sustain-A-Grain, a company that connects Kansas Kernza growers with local breweries and others. It also produces its own Climate Smart Kernza Egg Noodles.

In DeHaan’s view, niche markets are a critical stage in Kernza’s development—but he is optimistic about the power of genetics to close the yield gap with mainstream crops over time. Traditional wheat has had thousands of years of breeding to become what it is, he says, while Kernza has had just twenty. “If we can maintain our current rate of yield increase through breeding, we could have lines yielding on par with wheat [in Kansas] within 15 years,” DeHaan believes.

Thanks to a network of global institutions, Kernza’s entire genome has also been sequenced: “We haven’t even begun to tap into that diversity,” Dehaan says. The sequencing could allow researchers to identify genes that are linked to greater seed size or more gluten, and then weave in those traits through breeding. Developing a crop once took a century, says DeHaan: “We’re hoping to compress that down to just a couple of decades, to take a plant from wildness to the point where it’s actually serving our needs.” 

It’s not yields that will ultimately hold Kernza back, believes DeHaan, but the complex interplay of the market and governments. In the US, Kernza researchers and growers say they have struggled to access federal funding available to established grains like wheat, soybeans, and corn. A little funding has recently come online, such as a financial incentive to plant perennials in Minnesota and Michigan, and a program in Minnesota. 

But the real bull’s eye is crop insurance, which Kernza currently does not qualify for: “Close to 90% of the major crops on the US landscape carry crop insurance. That is a critical part for a crop to be attractive to farmers, especially with unpredictable weather patterns,” says Cynthia Bartels, a research scientist on the Kernza-CAP project. While crop insurance products are being developed for Kernza, those will likely take a few more years to sign off, she adds. 

Internationally, there are more fundamental hurdles to Kernza’s progress. In the EU, the next major market for this crop, costly compliance testing and paperwork have so far prevented Kernza from being commercially farmed. In 2019, Christophe David, a professor of agronomy at ISARA-Lyon in France, a research institution that specializes in agriculture, agribusiness and environment, facilitated an application to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to produce Kernza for food. Despite years of evidence from the US that the grain is safe to grow and eat, it still hasn’t been green lighted, says David. “I’m working with some small- and medium-sized companies that are ready to support a small business around Kernza. But without any [regulatory approval], it’s impossible to imagine that it has a future.” 

In 2024, the first hopeful signs came that the application might soon be approved. Once Kernza gets the green light, Crews believes, EU countries will be more receptive to this grain than the US—because under the European Green Deal agriculture is under pressure to align with sustainability and climate goals—and perennials provide some of the best opportunities to do so. 

Alongside Kernza, The Land Institute is also developing perennial sorghum, oilseeds, and legumes. The next-closest to commercialization is the trademarked Baki bean, a high-yielding, soybean-like perennial, which the Institute is also interested in commercializing in the EU. 

Whether Kernza remains as a boutique crop or ultimately carpets millions of hectares worldwide, DeHaan is more concerned that when people see and taste Kernza, it makes them consider how agriculture can and should change to benefit rather than degrade the environment. “It’s not so much what Kernza does on an acre of land right now,” says DeHaan. “It’s that we’re slowly growing awareness of perennial crops, and what they do for us.”

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Emma Bryce is a journalist based in London. As well as Anthropocene, her work has appeared in The Guardian, Wired UK, Audubon Magazine, The New York Times, Ensia, and Yale e360.