WILLIAM PELTON
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PHYTOFORM
Words - Madeleine Ary Hahne Photos - Zoe Salt
It’s 2042 and a hot, harvest afternoon. You’re walking among fields heady with perfumes of dry grass and black earth. At a hilltop, you stop. Croplands sweep out before you, molten gold, red, and green. Gone is the uniform monoculture of wheat or sorghum. Now patchwork fields, dense with foliage and stunning in their variety, have become the norm. This transformation was gradual. It started with new crops created by plant scientists for their diversity, hardiness, and intermixability. Only then, for the first time in the modern era, commercial polyculture became affordable. But intermixing species required strategy.
To live in the same field, each crop must ripen at a different time, and neighbouring species must work symbiotically. Machinery also needs to be more delicate, precise, and wise than ever before. Through the combined efforts of scientists, inventors, and farmers, this all happened over a mere 20 year period. As you watch, a machine rolls into view — an orange, sheep-sized robot. It delicately harvests one plant at a time. There are no combines and balers now; this is a different world. It’s not just the farms that have transformed, it’s the entire ecosystem. Polyculture limited the need for pesticides, so insects flourished. With them came birds, hedgehogs, and foxes. The soil at the field’s edge has transformed too. Dirt laced with little white or blue balls of chemical fertilisers, stinking of ammonia, are a thing of the past.
Earth now is naturally dark, crumbly, and rife with life. As evening falls, a white flash to your left. It’s a barn owl swooping down into the field, a place it can rely on for food, now that polyculture has finally brought plenty.
Meet William, a plant scientist striving to radically increase the diversity of plants we eat every day. Only seven plant species make up the vast majority of our caloric intake - seven out of the more than 30,000 edible species on earth. More diversity in agriculture not only means healthier soil and eco-systems, but also increased access to the range of nutrients humans need to thrive.
There’s a good reason only seven plant species dominate the agricultural landscape — they’re the ones which have been cultivated across millennia to be larger, tastier, and hardier than their predecessors. Other edible species, like the wild wheat of yore, are biologically unsuitable for large-scale commercial farming.
William and his business partner Nicolas Kral are trying to change that.
Growing up in a family of farmers taught William that farming, even with all the modern technologies, is a heroic struggle. He knew he wanted to help make things better. Through an undergraduate botany class, he discovered the power of plant science and the incredible, though sometimes problematic, world of gene modification (GMOs). “They’d take a gene from a fish and stick it in a strawberry” he said, “I can see why some people fear it.”
“They’d take a gene from a fish and stick it in a strawberry” he said, “I can see why some people fear it.”
At Phytoform, Will and Nicolas do things differently. They still modify plants, but only using genes already inherent in a species. His goal is to encourage certain genes to express, or repress, as necessary. It achieves the same results as selective breeding would, but in a timescale of years instead of decades or centuries. This form of modification is so new, and so natural, that many countries have even decided not to classify their work as GMOs at all.
If Will, Nicolas, and other plant scientists like him succeed, the worlds of agriculture, cuisine, and biodiversity will transform.
Co-evolved species will be able to live side-by-side in a field, naturally fending off pests and enriching the soils. Staple foods from outside of Europe and North America, like cassava and cowpeas, will become more commercially viable, increasing the ability of farmers from their native territories to build stable livelihoods.
But first, it starts small, with an idea, a laboratory, and a plant scientist.
How to learn more and get involved:
Other organisations working to increase biodiversity and sustainability in agriculture include Tropic Biosciences (Norwich, UK) and Inari Agriculture (Massachusetts, US) and Benson Hill (Missouri, US). Universities throughout the world are working on cutting edge plant genetics. Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cornell is particularly notable. Farmer’s Guide provides a farmer’s perspective on plant diversity and the future of agriculture. Discover what Will, Nicolas, and the team are working on at Phytoform.