## Metadata - Author: [[Janine M. Benyus]] - Full Title: Biomimicry - Category: #books ## Highlights - The biomimics are discovering what works in the natural world, and more important, what lasts. After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival. The more our world looks and functions like this natural world, the more likely we are to be accepted on this home that is ours, but not ours alone. ([Location 96](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002JB3E8I&location=96)) - The rub is, if we want to remain in Gaia’s good graces, that’s exactly how we have to think of ourselves, as one vote in a parliament of 30 million (maybe even 100 million), a species among species. Although we are different, and we have had a run of spectacular luck, we are not necessarily the best survivors over the long haul, nor are we immune to natural selection. ([Location 202](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002JB3E8I&location=202)) - It is time for us as a culture to walk in the forest again. Once we see nature as a mentor, our relationship with the living world changes. Gratitude tempers greed, and, as plant biologist Wes Jackson says, “the notion of resources becomes obscene.” We realize that the only way to keep learning from nature is to safeguard naturalness, the wellspring of good ideas. ([Location 212](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002JB3E8I&location=212)) - Author Richard Manning cuts through these statistics to ask the important question: When you have a system that is one part farmer and nine parts oil, who do you think will have the ultimate power? Not small farmers, and certainly not the landscape. ([Location 397](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002JB3E8I&location=397)) - Breeding eight perennial crop species from scratch looks more feasible than breeding two hundred, but it’s still a daunting challenge. Today, most of the food eaten around the world comes from only about twenty species, and none of them are perennials! Some began as perennials, but over the ten-thousand-year odyssey of plant breeding, we systematically removed their hardy perennial traits, marching right by the sweet spot between wild and tame, and domesticating them until they were annual by nature. ([Location 530](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002JB3E8I&location=530)) - “The common wisdom was that perennials, which spend most of their energy belowground, could never be made to produce copious seeds [the part that humans eat]. If they were to yield more seeds, the thinking went, there would be a trade-off belowground, and they’d lose their ability to overwinter.” ([Location 543](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002JB3E8I&location=543)) - Most of our crops are exotics, brought over in our traveling bundles from Mexico and Europe. The only native plants that we have ever domesticated in this country are sunflowers, cranberries, blueberries, pecans, Concord grapes, and Jerusalem artichokes. ([Location 597](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002JB3E8I&location=597))