Locavore leaders such as Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, and Barbara Kingsolver all speak of the need for sweeping changes in how we get our food. A longtime leader of this movement is Wes Jackson, who for decades has taken it upon himself to speak for the land, to speak for the soil itself. Here, he offers a manifesto toward a conceptual revolution: Jackson asks us to look to natural ecosystemsor, if one prefers, nature in generalas the measure against which we judge all of our agricultural practices.Jackson believes the time is right to do away with annual monoculture grains, which are vulnerable to national security threats and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs. Soil erosion and the poisons polluting our water and airall associated with agriculture from its beginningsforetell a population with its natural fertility greatly destroyed.In this eloquent and timely volume, Jackson argues we must look to nature itself to lead us out of the mess weve made. The natural ecosystems will tell us, if we listen, what should happen to the future of food.

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