Back to nature… and a million years of R&D

"We cannot command Nature except by obeying her." Francis Bacon (English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist and author) understood this in the 17th Century but since then the human race has been desperately trying to overpower the natural order of things through technology, chemicals and artificial systems. Agriculture has played a part in this too: think of mono-crops and chemical fertilisers. Now, the drive to be more sustainable is powering a return to imitating nature. Could ‘biomimicry’ be the new agricultural buzz word?

Biomimicry is a style of design that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s patterns and strategies, which have evolved through millions of years of testing. The basic idea is that by looking at nature, which has already solved many of the problems we are facing, we could find solutions to our energy, food production, climate, transportation or pollution problems.

This all goes far beyond any hippy visions you might have of us ‘going back to nature’. This is science and engineering meeting nature to generate powerful results. For example, by studying mangroves and penguins we could figure out how to desalinate water without the use of fossil fuels.

But how do we use this in the farming industry?

The Land Institute, based in Kansas, America , is looking into how prairie-style planting could help us grow food sustainably. “The problem”, says Wes Jackson (recipient of the MacArthur ‘genius grant’ and founder of the institute, “ is that agriculture in most places is based on practices that use up limited resources. The major grains, like wheat and corn, are planted afresh each year. When the fields are later plowed, they lose soil. The soil that remains in these fields loses nitrogen and carbon."

A biologically diverse prairie is designed to take care of itself; it’s productive, resilient and creates its own nutrients. The Land Institute has been working successfully to turn modern agriculture on its head by using perennials which can produce equivalent yields of grain to conventional annuals and maintain and even improve the water and soil resources.

But biomimicry is no silver bullet. The breeding processes required to turn wildflowers into viable, edible crops takes a lot of time. The Land Institute estimates it is 25 to 50 years away from the first commercial prairie-farm. However, by fusing what they know with the latest innovations in ‘smart breeding’ we may not have to wait all that long after all. Smart breeding is a system that blends our modern understanding of the genome with sophisticated breeding techniques to create new crops and varieties without chemicals or genetic modification. Read about how a savvy scientist revolutionised tomato growing through smart breeding.

These new processes could deliver the kind of plants it'll take to make Jackson's vision of prairie-farms a reality.

Tell us what you think. Could you use biomimicry in your work? Have you done already? Write a comment below.

Claire Wyatt co-manages the Farming Futures project: c.wyatt@forumforthefuture.org

AskNature is the online inspiration source for the biomimicry community. Use it to search nature’s solutions and apply it to your work.