Rye Revival

Planting millions of acres of rye annually is a necessary and critical component of a well-considered, multi-pronged response to the climate crisis

By Gary Zimmer, Rita Hindin, Avery Robinson and Sandy Syburg

In the Upper Midwest, because of an array of government subsidies and incentives, and the way that markets have evolved in this policy context, production of corn and soy is the primary use of agricultural land. Notwithstanding, scaled-up ecological planting of cereal rye (Secale cereale), for harvest and as a cover crop, is — simply put — an incredibly low-hanging fruit for us to move toward efficient use of solar energy. 

Cereal rye is the most cold-hardy grain. This means that in the Upper Midwest it is uniquely capable of being planted and germinating after the corn or soy harvest — utilizing solar energy that would otherwise go untapped. Rye’s energy efficiency continues synergistically through the winter as the plants’ abundant living roots reduce soil erosion and scavenge nitrogen, and they are the earliest in spring to access freely available, otherwise-unutilized solar energy. 

Living plants rooted in the soil through the winter are an effective way to regenerate and restore precious microbial life, minerals and other critically important compounds that contribute to the vitality of plants or foraging animals. The alternative — fields without a winter (cover) crop — are a leading factor in calamitous soil erosion and topsoil runoff, with their attendant degradation of waterways near and far. 

When rye is grown as a cover crop and returned to the soil, the plant’s nitrogen-scavenging ability reduces the need for and cost (monetary and ecological) of application of nitrogenous fertilizer for the subsequent planting. Manmade fertilizer is produced by a notoriously energy-intensive process that feeds the climate crisis. Astute organic/regenerative farmers and ecologists (including the co-authors of this statement) are eager to share their knowledge of how to seed clover — which is part of the legume family — into dormant rye. Legumes are unique in that their root systems synergize with soil bacteria to naturally generate (“fix”) plant-accessible nitrogen from the air’s vast reservoir of inaccessible N₂. (Air is 78 percent N₂!) 

Rye possesses additional noteworthy climate-friendly attributes. It has been dubbed “the unruly weed” for such attributes as its resistance to winterkill and its competitive advantage when an inter-cropped field subsequently self-seeds. Also, rye is one of a relatively small group of plants that are innately allelopathic — i.e., that have a root system that suppresses growth of competitors, reducing the need for alternative means to control weeds (such as herbicides.) To farmers and others concerned with ecosystem well-being, rye’s suite of attributes indicates the plant’s potential as an obvious gateway for grain growers considering transitioning to organic production. 

In 2017, Paul Hawken published Drawdown as the culmination of his longstanding and multi-dimensional efforts to galvanize world attention to our climate crisis. The volume lays out an array of 100 presently implementable solutions to the crisis, and of the 20 top solutions, eight relate to the food system. We observe that planting more rye in the Upper Midwest advances four of those eight. 

The Drawdown Review, a 2020 update, uses a slightly different calculus to organize solutions to the climate crisis. Within its “Food, Agriculture and Land Use” sector, a dedicated effort to increase rye-in-the-ground advances three of Project Drawdown’s seven solutions that favorably “shift agricultural practices”: conservation agriculture, regenerative annual cropping and nutrient management. Rye is also tangentially valuable for a fourth solution — “farm irrigation efficiency.” 

Soil health exists on a multi-dimensional continuum; a complex set of factors undergird the attributes of healthy soils. Refining understanding of how to best achieve and sustain maximal soil health is a hot topic these days, as is finding language to best articulate the evolving understanding. 

The same year that Drawdown was published (2017), California State University at Chico’s Regenerative Agriculture Initiative and The Carbon Underground offered a conceptual description of regenerative agriculture accompanied by more detailed explication of regenerative agricultural practices. The description begins, “farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity — resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle.”

It concludes with a post-script: “This definition will continue to evolve as research and practice inform what builds the health of soils, sequesters carbon, and grows more topsoil for future generations.” This “definition” has been embraced and is being promoted by other leading entities working in the field, such as Regeneration International, a preeminent worldwide regenerative agriculture research and advocacy network. 

To our understanding, rye’s attributes establish the plant as a critically valuable part of climate-smart Upper Midwest agroecology that fully aligns with the definition of regenerative agriculture. 

We feel equally strongly that recognition of rye’s potential to favorably impact the agroecological contributors to the climate crisis and other intertwined societal challenges supports the groundbreaking, ground-nurturing concept Rights-of-Soil (RoS) that Dr. Rattan Lal, recipient of the 2020 World Food Prize, introduced in 2019. As Dr. Lal writes, RoS implies “soil is a living entity; sustains life; and has a right to thrive, flourish, and be protected. Thus, the RoS is not based on economic benefits, but on protecting and restoring the soil for the greater good of the planet rather than just for the humanity ….” 

This is not the space to even cursorily present information about rye’s value to American and immigrant cultural history, its distinct nutritional strengths for people, its significance as both feed and forage for diverse species of farm animals, its place in the nascent renaissance of rye for baking artisanal bread and pastries, or even its importance as the base of America’s original whiskey. 

We did briefly introduce another key aspect of America’s rye story at the beginning of this essay: the existence of an array of government policies that overwhelmingly favor corn and soy production on Upper Midwestern agricultural land. This labyrinth is nothing less than the proverbial elephant in the room. For now, we merely acknowledge the obvious: getting more rye plants in the ground is one of many climate-smart agricultural strategies being undermined by the rigged agricultural playing field. Some other practices that are disincentivized include the promotion of perennial agriculture and (not wholly distinct from this) the scaling up of local food production to match local need. 

In sum, we believe that well-managed rotations that include rye could, should and would positively impact Upper Midwestern farms’ appropriately calculated multi-year balance sheet (could: absent subsidization and incentivization of other crops; should: we think rapidly transitioning to a level agricultural playing field is right). 

The advanced and advancing degradation of the Upper Midwest’s ecosystem — widely acknowledged in the published literature (see, for example, “The Urgency of Transforming the Midwestern U.S. Landscape into More than Corn and Soybean”) — is also unpleasantly knocking on our doors and slamming, increasingly vocally, into our windows. 

Planting millions of acres of rye annually is a necessary and critical component of a well-considered, multi-pronged response to the climate crisis.

Gary Zimmer, Rita Hindin, Avery Robinson and Sandy Syburg are members of the Rye Revival core team.