I don't understand how taking 25M acres of wheat production and turning that into 75M acres of Kernza produces a net environmental benefit. Which 50M acres of native habitat are we going to cut down? That's the size of a North Eastern state... we should be going the other direction and increasing yield and decreasing total acres if we want to restore native habitats. There's no way that the lower inputs (and wheat doesn't take much) of Kernza justify destroying the native habitat of an entire state.
But the yield is increasing rapidly, and there is far less energy use, fertilizer which pollutes streams and the ocean, pesticides, and tillage which causes soil loss and releases co2 into the atmosphere.
I don't think there is any doubt this is the direction we need to go. Unless, of course, you are interested in maximizing the profits of certain corporations.
Actually, there is great doubt. Many environmental campaigners are coming around to intensification broadly as the path out of our current environmental problems. Check out http://www.ecomodernism.org/ a bunch of ex-greenpeace types that are concerned with practical solutions. Tripling yield takes a long time and wheat, and especially corn, is on an exponential improvement curve. https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/yieldtren...
Or get people to eat less meat. It's something like 30:1 ratio for beef -- ie. one calorie of beef is equivalent to 30 calories from other vegetal sources, not to mention other knock on environmental impacts.
