Furuno and the Massas are not the only ones experimenting with polyculture. Indeed, many other farmers and scientists across the country are turning to agroecology—working to develop mixed agriculture systems, where instead of planting a single crop, they grow a mix of different species that better replicates the normal ecological community makeup of a given region. Evidence is mounting that such systems can increase a farm’s productivity.

A 2010 report by the International Livestock Research Institute concluded that mixed polyculture farms—ones that, like Furuno’s and the Massas’, grow both plants and livestock—hold the most promise for intensifying food production worldwide. “It is not big efficient farms on high potential lands but rather one billion small, mixed, family farmers tending rice paddies or cultivating maize and beans while raising a few chickens and pigs, a herd of goats or a cow or two…[who are] likely to play the biggest role in global food security over the next several decades,” the institute’s executive director, Knut Hove, wrote in the report. “These ‘mixed extensive’ farms make up the biggest…and most environmentally sustainable agricultural system in the world.”

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Meanwhile, at the Land Institute in Kansas, Wes Jackson is working on a more ambitious plan that he says will correct a mistake made well before the Green Revolution or the rise of factory farms: He wants to replace virtually all of our existing grain crops—which are annual crops—with perennial crop varieties. Early farmers domesticated annual plants—which grow, produce seeds, and die in a single year—because they could manipulate them to produce higher yields from one year to the next (by selecting the best producers and junking the rest or by crossbreeding plants with good traits). But annuals have to be replanted every season, which requires labor and fossil fuel energy and necessitates tearing up the ground and disrupting the delicate balance of soil ecosystems.

Perennials, on the other hand, can be harvested year after year without disturbing the soil to replant—which means heavy equipment is used less often to manage perennial crops. And the deep roots that perennials develop not only hold soil in place, but they tap much farther down into the soil than their annual counterparts, allowing them to access more of the soil’s water, thus dramatically reducing the amount of irrigation needed. Less herbicide is needed for perennial plots as well; weeds do not readily sprout and grow among the established plants. This makes perennials especially attractive for regions with marginal land or an arid climate.

“We hope to advance and enlarge upon the idea that the ecosystem is the necessary conceptual tool for truly sustainable grain agriculture,” Jackson told the Atlantic in a recent interview. “We believe we can have an agriculture where management by human intervention is greatly reduced.”

As these many examples illustrate (agroecology, the resurrection of traditional farming techniques, IPM, and the development of perennial crops), a multitude of methods qualify as sustainable, and all can potentially help in the transition from industrial to sustainable farming. But as with all other environmental choices, it shouldn’t be surprising that sustainable and organic agriculture have their own set of trade-offs: While they might be more environmentally friendly than high-input industrial methods, they may also be more expensive and in some cases produce less food per acre of land. But Greg and Raquel were determined to at least try. TABLE 17.1