With the changing climate front of mind, Living Roots explores an alternate vision, one focused on the long game and built on perennials—plants that remain in the ground year after year. Edited by Carlisle and Streit Krug, the collection of 34 essays by Indigenous leaders, farmers, scientists, and chefs makes a case for centering perennial crops on our farms and in our diets.

Because of their deep and robust root systems, perennial crops—including fruit and nut trees, forage grasses, and grains like Kernza—can pull large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and store it underground. They also reduce erosion, increase the organic matter in soil, boost biodiversity, and improve the health of those who eat them.

In the book, we hear from Indigenous people restoring buffalo herds on the native grasslands of the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota and studying the sacred serviceberry on Blackfeet land in Montana. We hear from the creators of an urban food forest in Southeast Atlanta and a farmer raising chickens under a protective canopy of hazelnut trees in Minnesota. And we meet the researchers studying the ecological effects of prairie strips, or perennial patches within annual crop fields, and those developing perennial versions of rice, sorghum, and the oilseed silphium.

Recently, we caught up with Carlisle, an agroecologist and associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to discuss the promise of perennial agriculture, the roadblocks it faces, and where she finds hope.

A number of your books, including Lentil Underground, Grain by Grain, and Healing Grounds, have looked at the promise of organic and regenerative agricultural systems. How does this book fit into your trajectory as a writer and thinker, and what do you hope it adds to your body of work?

Working on this project has been about trying to respond to this moment. I’m feeling the weight of so many crises at once. There’s the urgent need to slow emissions but also the urgent need to adapt to the climate change that’s already here—and then at the same time, the urgent need to address the deep divisions and inequity in our society that are making it difficult to tackle collective challenges like climate change. I see the perennial movement as having the capacity to help us do all these things at once.

How did you select the contributors to the book?

Groups that have been working hard for a long time—on things like agroforestry or regenerative grazing or breeding perennial grains—are starting to come together into a broader perennial movement. We wanted the book to offer a behind-the-scenes. What would it be like to host an awesome potluck with all these people working on perennials in different ways?

We wanted the book to represent different kinds of perennial foods and their diverse geographies, mostly across North America but a little bit from around the world. We also wanted to show the diverse roles that people play.

Do you have personal experience with the perennial movement, or are you approaching it more from the perspective of an interested researcher?

It comes from a personal place for me, and for Aubrey as well. For me, the joy of participating in the culture around perennial foods—whether it’s planting fruit trees in a community orchard or enjoying the culinary traditions from all over the world that are tied to them—reminds me what a beautiful planet we live on, and how joyful it is to live in community. It helps me get up every day and fight for those things, and it propels me forward to do my larger work as a researcher and an educator.

Also, one of the most exciting things for me is experiencing what a powerful rallying point perennials are for people from different parts of the political spectrum. When you start talking about planting a tree to benefit future generations, that’s something a lot of people can get behind, together.

The environmental benefits of perennial agriculture are well documented, and yet 60 to 80 percent of cropland is dedicated to annuals. Why has getting farmers to adopt perennials proven so difficult? 

Many of the book’s contributors have written about this in their own context. I think about Wendy Johnson, an amazing Iowa farmer. She talks a lot about how crop insurance is such a huge impediment for folks in the Midwest to move to anything other than corn and soy, let alone perennials. So that’s about current federal farm policy.

There’s also the way markets are structured—do farmers have a clear opportunity to sell that crop into a market they can count on?

In California, land tenure is a big issue. When folks are renting on short-term leases—one, two, or three years—they can’t really plant perennials and be there for those perennials to benefit them.

What are the biggest challenges for the perennial movement under the present administration? 

Climate Smart Commodities funding [canceled in April 2025] had been a huge boost to perennials, better than anything we’d ever seen from federal farm policy.

Jesse Smith, my neighbor here in Santa Barbara, is the leader of an elderberry project that involved a bunch of partners across coastal California to develop native blue elderberry as a viable commercial crop. When they lost their Climate-Smart Commodities funding and had to jump through hoops to try to get it back, that slowed what had been exciting progress, not only on the farm, but with things like a processing facility, which is key to make a viable market. Losing that funding was a big blow.

The other challenge: A transition to perennials is a huge learning experience. People need to figure out what to grow, which varieties, how to space them, and how to take care of them over multiple years. The pullback of USDA staff that would have supported farmers in transitioning to perennials has been a real challenge.

Is there a flip side—are there unique opportunities now?

What’s happening on the community level, with the growth of organizations like the Savanna Institute and movements like Indigenous buffalo restoration, is just extraordinary.

There’s a lot more knowledge and resources in the community for farmers who are looking to perennialize. They have a better chance of finding a peer who could be a mentor or finding a conference that they could attend to support them in that transition.

Also, the transition to perennials or more regenerative methods in general might have felt voluntary or opt-in 20 or 30 years ago. Now, a lot of farmers and farm communities are experiencing just how difficult it is to continue with conventional farming under the current climate and market circumstances. The chaos is driving a lot of people to look for alternatives. And there are robust community efforts waiting to receive them.

Many contributors identify with perennials on a very personal level, and several speak to their spiritual significance. What makes perennials resonate in this deep way?