What’s Biomimicry?

The August 19 issue of  Now, a weekly news magazine from Toronto, features several articles on  “biomimicry,”  a concept developed by biologist Janine Benyus (Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired By Nature). One short article in the issue, “Plagued by the Plow,” by Wayne Roberts suggests that the agro-ecology long practiced in Latin America and Asia, constitutes a form of biomimicry:  agro-ecology “copies nature in favouring perennial plants: fruit and avocado trees, grasses, nut trees, berry bushes,” and in focusing on “gathering and carrying” as much as cultivating.

Experimentation with perennial plants has long been the focus of research at the Land Institute, where researchers are attempting to develop perennial grain crops as part of perennial prairie polycultures.