The Military Industrial Perrenial Polyculture Complex

The RAND corporation has a paper out in engineering perrennial polycultures - interesting perspective: http://www.endgame.org.uk/pdfs/polyculture.pdf

Said another way, had the first inhabitants of the prairies found that there were enough
edible grasses there for their needs, they would not have needed to become annual tillers and
sowers. They could have survived simply by reaping what they needed from the prairie year
after year. Indeed, when human populations were smaller, many societies did subsist on what
wild ecosystems provided. Prairie ecosystems—with their perennial polycultures and mixed
intercropping—required no maintenance, yet provided food for a variety of animals, continuous
ground cover and deep root systems to prevent erosion, legumes to provide natural
fertilizers, and natural disease and pest control measures. Thus, if we could engineer more
bountiful prairies, we could dispense with much of the machinery, energy, fertilizers, irrigation,
herbicides, and pesticides that are mainstays of modern agriculture. That, in turn, would
have secondary benefits in environmental remediation, biodiversity, energy use, and—as I will
argue below—in combating global problems such as poverty, hunger, and even disparities in
education.