Rolling acres of corn, soybeans, sugar beets and other crops dominate the Midwest. Large farms stretch endlessly from one corner of the state to another, filling the entire horizon with crops. These giant plots of industrial agriculture are normal to us, they’re all we know. But there is something about them that we don’t know. According to many researchers and scientists, this type of agriculture not only ruins topsoil and biodiversity, but it is unsustainable and serves as the root of our culture’s split between people and nature, much disease and poor health, and class inequality and police states. Tony Hemenway, the author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, will explore this issue in a public lecture at the University of Minnesota's St. Paul Student Center. His talk will uncover why permaculture – an ecological design approach based on knowledge gained from nature – and not new fuel or technology is the way out of our society’s current dilemma.

Thursday, January 7
7 p.m. – 9 p.m.
$10

St. Paul Student Center
University of Minnesota
2017 Buford Ave., St. Paul