XCVII To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery' The revery

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What the Prairie Can Teach Us
Jonathan G. Andelson 70 Professor of
Anthropology Director, Center for Prairie
Studies Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA
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XCVII To make a prairie it takes a
clover and one bee,--- One clover, and a
bee, And revery. The revery alone will
do If bees are few. -Emily Dickinson
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The Vanishing Prairie

• In 1850, Iowa was 85 tallgrass prairie and
  savanna, about 10 woodlands, and about 5
  wetlands
• Today, over 99.9 of the original Iowa prairie
  has been eliminated, most of it replaced by
  agricultural land

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Repairing the Damage 1

• Preserve existing prairie remnants
• Reestablish prairie habitats
• Reintroduce prairie animals

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Repairing the Damage 2

• Eat mostly food produced
• within 100 miles of
• where you live.
• -Barbara Kingsolver

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Repairing the Damage 3

• Lower your corn soybean footprint
• eat less meat raised on corn and beans
• consume less high fructose corn syrup
• avoid corn-based ethanol

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Repairing the Damage 4

• Annual Perennial
• Monocultures Polycultures
• -Wes Jackson, The Land Institute

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Know Your Place

• All history is ultimately local and personal.
  To tell what we remember, and to keep on telling
  it, is to keep the past alive in the present.
  Should we not do so, we could not know, in the
  deepest sense, how to inhabit a place. To
  inhabit a place means literally to have made it a
  habit. We own places because they have entered
  the continuum of our lives. What is strange to
  us unfamiliar can never be home.
• -Paul Gruchow, Grass Roots the Universe of Home

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• MISSION
• The Center for Prairie Studies promotes
  understanding of and connection to our place and
  its people.

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SUMMER INTERNSHIPS
Allison Berger - GALFA (Grinnell Area Local Foods
Alliance) Assisted with garden care, harvesting,
and share distribution. Jacob Gjesdahl -
Diversity Farms near Dedham, Iowa prairie
restoration and reconstruction.
Erica Hougland - Youth Conservation CorpLed a
crew of high school students who worked on
projects in Grinnell's parks. Devon McGranahan -
Jasper County NRCS office in Newton, Iowa Worked
on the Rock Creek Lake Watershed Project. Daniel
Lesh - The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas
Participated in research into the creation of a
sustainable agriculture with the prairie as the
model. Calvin Dane - Quad Cities Buy Fresh-Buy
Local, BettendorfAssisted with various phases of
the development of the local foods movement
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STUDENT RESEARCH PROJECTS
Nathan Solmose The exploitation of indigenous
prairie plants for medicinal purposes in Jasper
and Poweshiek Counties, Iowa. Andrea Rissing
Women in Iowa Agriculture Corey McIntosh The
Bartlett Family of Grinnell