The public is invited to listen to “A Prairie Conversation” with Wes Jackson and friends. The event is  from 6-8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 13, in Peters Science Hall 201 on the campus of Kansas Wesleyan University.

According to KWU, the second installment in the lecture series will feature Stan Cox, ecosphere fellow at The Land Institute.

The topic of the conversation will be Cox’s career in crop research, effects of developing perennial agriculture and Cox’s work as an ecosphere fellow.

Cox did his graduate work in plant breeding at Iowa State University and performed field research on sorghum at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Patancheru, India. After graduation in 1983, he worked for 13 years as a wheat geneticist for the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Manhattan, Kansas. There, he worked developing disease-resistant wheat germplasm using hybrids between wheat and its wild ancestral species. Cox joined The Land Institute in 2000 and worked on developing perennial sorghum.

The discussion with Cox will be followed by a question-and-answer session moderated by Jackson.

Jackson, a 1958 graduate of Kansas Wesleyan and a professor emeritus for the university, is the co-founder and former president of The Land Institute in Salina. The Land Institute is a science-based research organization working to develop an alternative to traditional agricultural practices. Its work is dedicated to advancing perennial grain crops and polyculture farming solutions.

“A Prairie Conversation” is sponsored by Jackson, the Community Resilience Hub at Kansas Wesleyan and The Land Institute, with funding from the Resilience Studies Consortium. It is free and open to the public.