**1. Introduction**

During the entire time that humans have existed on this planet, people have been central to landscape changes in most places—from small individual gestures to large collective efforts. Grassland ecosystems dominated by Poaceae are estimated to cover 40.5% of the land area of Earth, excluding Greenland and Antarctica [1]. Grasses though are found in Greenland [2],

© 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

and more tenuously in Antarctica, where unintentionally introduced *Poa annua* L. has survived for more than a decade near a research station [3].

were bred and selected to meet specific regional climate realities such as warm season, cool season, short day-length, flooding, higher yields, drought and pests, or disease tolerance. Unless the cultivar or species is locally adapted to changing climate, finding new species, landraces and cultivars that are suitable and will thrive in shifting weather patterns is urgent,

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*'Vulnerability hotspots'*, are described as regions likely to experience both a decline in adaptive capacity for wheat and maize, and a decline in available soil moisture [13, p. 195]. The regions with lowest adaptive capacity were identified as wheat production areas in western Russia, northern India, southeastern South America and southeastern Africa. Wheat regions most likely to be exposed to drought and lacking adaptive capacity were identified as southeastern USA, southeastern South America, the northeastern Mediterranean and parts of central Asia. For maize (corn), regions with the lowest adaptive capacity include the northeastern USA, southeastern South America, southeastern Africa and central to northern India; when drought is added to the maize model vulnerability hotspots identified include southeastern South America, parts of southern Africa and the northeastern Mediterranean. The future of these cereals as a reliable source of food in these regions, when greater yields and food security are imperative to feed growing populations planet-

The effects of climate change on food production were modelled in West Africa, and a wide variety of adaptation options available were reviewed to ensure immediate and long-term food security, including selecting different cultivars and crop types, more inputs (water and fertilizer), water harvesting during rainy seasons for irrigation during dry periods, and zerotillage [14, 15]. The adaptation option most likely to be successful under current climate conditions is to develop seeds with '*increased thermal resilience during grain formation'* [14, p. 304), which they note may sustain crop yields under present climate realities, but may not be the best adaptation option for future climate changes. This is the hallmark of a wicked problem

1. You don't understand the problem until you have developed a solution; it's cumulative, cascading, synergistic and

3. Solutions are not right or wrong, true-or-false, good-or-bad but rather are better/worse, good enough/not good

5. Every solution to a wicked is a 'one-shot operation'; it can't be replicated with the same outcomes for any other

6. There is no given alternative solution; potential solutions may be crafted, but more may not have been thought of,

to avoid food insecurity and famine at the worst [11, 12].

**1.1. Poaceae and climate change**

wide, is doubtful.

evolving as it is explored.

enough.

wicked problem.

[16], as characterized in **Table 1** [17].

4. Each wicked problem is essentially unique and novel.

**Table 1.** Six characteristics of wicked problems.

and more will be through shared knowledge and understanding.

2. There is no stopping rule; no definitive problem = no definitive solution.

Grassland ecosystems and their soils gave rise to the coevolution of humans and edible grasses through hand selection and improvement of grains for food and beverages including rice, wheat, barley, corn, rye and oats [4, 5]. Dormant winter seasons in Northern Europe and the domestication of livestock led to the need and selection of superior grasses for hay, fodder and straw bedding [6, 7]. Other grasses proved useful for technology: fuel, shelter, clothing, rope, baskets and various domestic products.

The transformation from wild grain to domesticated cereal helped create high density places of human habitation, and humans require food, energy, water and wealth. Wealth gave rise to the use of grasses for aesthetics and recreation or leisure pursuits ranging from cosmetic lawn and ornamental gardening to turf for golf, lawn bowling, croquet and various other field sports. Until recently, human beings have generally had a free hand in shaping nature to fit our lifestyles. Humans have converted some 30% of the planet (about 3.8 billion hectares) to resource extraction, agriculture, urban and suburban uses. For example, turf grass and lawn coverage of the American landscape, while highly fragmented, was estimated at 164,000 km<sup>2</sup> , which it is suggested, represents '*the single largest irrigated 'crop' in the US, occupying a total area three times larger than the surface of irrigated corn'* [8, p 3].

Conversion to lawn and turf in the US, based on urbanization rates, is increasing at an annual rate of 8000 km<sup>2</sup> [9], and these numbers do not take into account the agricultural areas required to produce grass seed to create lawns. The human desire for green, beautiful lawn requires considerable inputs that result in the use of scarce potable water, fertilizers that pollute potable water, and mowing produces greenhouse gases contributing to higher temperatures. Consequently, we now find ourselves facing planetary climate change that is not particularly human-friendly. In the urbanized world, the moment is long overdue where we need to think whether grass and lawn are an essential need, or just a need that follows long-established social norms, without questioning the impacts or necessity.

The planet is confronting dramatic changes in demographics, population growth and increasing frequency of severe climate impacts and natural disasters [10]. Planning and designing for resilience—environmental-social-economic—is the only way to help humans (mostly dwelling in cities) survive, adapt, grow and thrive as these changes affect demands on the built environment, infrastructure, transportation systems, and water and energy resources.

Basic to our actions are the concepts of human (social) adaptation, local and traditional knowledge, environmental values, place attachments and cultural landscapes. The entry point to action is understanding nature (including human nature), and what role it has in placing limits on, or even directing, our actions and efforts to adapt and become more resilient as humans. In the most developed countries, resilience means rejecting purely cosmetic grass use and embracing Poaceae for its traditional technologies within the urban aesthetic, exploring the domestication (or understanding the wild harvesting potential) of other species of Poaceae to adapt cultivation to meet changes in climate such as warmer temperatures, or the new normal of climate extremes.

As I describe in this paper, humans have barely touched the potential of Poaceae to meet their needs for food, medicine, and other cultural and material goods. Cereal qualities and traits were bred and selected to meet specific regional climate realities such as warm season, cool season, short day-length, flooding, higher yields, drought and pests, or disease tolerance. Unless the cultivar or species is locally adapted to changing climate, finding new species, landraces and cultivars that are suitable and will thrive in shifting weather patterns is urgent, to avoid food insecurity and famine at the worst [11, 12].

#### **1.1. Poaceae and climate change**

and more tenuously in Antarctica, where unintentionally introduced *Poa annua* L. has sur-

Grassland ecosystems and their soils gave rise to the coevolution of humans and edible grasses through hand selection and improvement of grains for food and beverages including rice, wheat, barley, corn, rye and oats [4, 5]. Dormant winter seasons in Northern Europe and the domestication of livestock led to the need and selection of superior grasses for hay, fodder and straw bedding [6, 7]. Other grasses proved useful for technology: fuel, shelter, clothing,

The transformation from wild grain to domesticated cereal helped create high density places of human habitation, and humans require food, energy, water and wealth. Wealth gave rise to the use of grasses for aesthetics and recreation or leisure pursuits ranging from cosmetic lawn and ornamental gardening to turf for golf, lawn bowling, croquet and various other field sports. Until recently, human beings have generally had a free hand in shaping nature to fit our lifestyles. Humans have converted some 30% of the planet (about 3.8 billion hectares) to resource extraction, agriculture, urban and suburban uses. For example, turf grass and lawn coverage of the American landscape, while highly fragmented, was estimated at 164,000 km<sup>2</sup>

which it is suggested, represents '*the single largest irrigated 'crop' in the US, occupying a total area* 

Conversion to lawn and turf in the US, based on urbanization rates, is increasing at an annual

to produce grass seed to create lawns. The human desire for green, beautiful lawn requires considerable inputs that result in the use of scarce potable water, fertilizers that pollute potable water, and mowing produces greenhouse gases contributing to higher temperatures. Consequently, we now find ourselves facing planetary climate change that is not particularly human-friendly. In the urbanized world, the moment is long overdue where we need to think whether grass and lawn are an essential need, or just a need that follows long-established

The planet is confronting dramatic changes in demographics, population growth and increasing frequency of severe climate impacts and natural disasters [10]. Planning and designing for resilience—environmental-social-economic—is the only way to help humans (mostly dwelling in cities) survive, adapt, grow and thrive as these changes affect demands on the built environment, infrastructure, transportation systems, and water and energy resources. Basic to our actions are the concepts of human (social) adaptation, local and traditional knowledge, environmental values, place attachments and cultural landscapes. The entry point to action is understanding nature (including human nature), and what role it has in placing limits on, or even directing, our actions and efforts to adapt and become more resilient as humans. In the most developed countries, resilience means rejecting purely cosmetic grass use and embracing Poaceae for its traditional technologies within the urban aesthetic, exploring the domestication (or understanding the wild harvesting potential) of other species of Poaceae to adapt cultivation to meet changes in climate such as warmer temperatures, or the new normal of climate extremes. As I describe in this paper, humans have barely touched the potential of Poaceae to meet their needs for food, medicine, and other cultural and material goods. Cereal qualities and traits

[9], and these numbers do not take into account the agricultural areas required

,

vived for more than a decade near a research station [3].

*three times larger than the surface of irrigated corn'* [8, p 3].

social norms, without questioning the impacts or necessity.

rate of 8000 km<sup>2</sup>

rope, baskets and various domestic products.

88 Grasses - Benefits, Diversities and Functional Roles

*'Vulnerability hotspots'*, are described as regions likely to experience both a decline in adaptive capacity for wheat and maize, and a decline in available soil moisture [13, p. 195]. The regions with lowest adaptive capacity were identified as wheat production areas in western Russia, northern India, southeastern South America and southeastern Africa. Wheat regions most likely to be exposed to drought and lacking adaptive capacity were identified as southeastern USA, southeastern South America, the northeastern Mediterranean and parts of central Asia. For maize (corn), regions with the lowest adaptive capacity include the northeastern USA, southeastern South America, southeastern Africa and central to northern India; when drought is added to the maize model vulnerability hotspots identified include southeastern South America, parts of southern Africa and the northeastern Mediterranean. The future of these cereals as a reliable source of food in these regions, when greater yields and food security are imperative to feed growing populations planetwide, is doubtful.

The effects of climate change on food production were modelled in West Africa, and a wide variety of adaptation options available were reviewed to ensure immediate and long-term food security, including selecting different cultivars and crop types, more inputs (water and fertilizer), water harvesting during rainy seasons for irrigation during dry periods, and zerotillage [14, 15]. The adaptation option most likely to be successful under current climate conditions is to develop seeds with '*increased thermal resilience during grain formation'* [14, p. 304), which they note may sustain crop yields under present climate realities, but may not be the best adaptation option for future climate changes. This is the hallmark of a wicked problem [16], as characterized in **Table 1** [17].

6. There is no given alternative solution; potential solutions may be crafted, but more may not have been thought of, and more will be through shared knowledge and understanding.

**Table 1.** Six characteristics of wicked problems.

<sup>1.</sup> You don't understand the problem until you have developed a solution; it's cumulative, cascading, synergistic and evolving as it is explored.

<sup>2.</sup> There is no stopping rule; no definitive problem = no definitive solution.

<sup>3.</sup> Solutions are not right or wrong, true-or-false, good-or-bad but rather are better/worse, good enough/not good enough.

<sup>4.</sup> Each wicked problem is essentially unique and novel.

<sup>5.</sup> Every solution to a wicked is a 'one-shot operation'; it can't be replicated with the same outcomes for any other wicked problem.

#### **1.2. Human adaptation and resilience to changing climate**

Rather than dwell on whether an unsolvable wicked problem with potentially dire outcomes for West Africa has been described [14], it seems prudent to recognize that it may be wicked and that there will be parallel scenarios playing out elsewhere on this planet sharing the consequences of climate change. We know problems can't be solved without trying solutions, most often at great cost, including loss of life from famine. In the case of food security and climate change in vulnerable regions, good enough/not good enough strategies still leave too much uncertainty in both farm fields and dinner bowls.

Resilience then, in this age of climate change, means that if plants cannot adapt fast enough, humans have to step up and adapt their behaviours, personally and collectively. Every food security issue must be addressed globally, as is the United Nations in attempting to mitigate the present Sudan Famine crisis which has displaced 1.6 million people from East Africa [28]. All resilience and survival efforts must be multi-directional, multi-pronged, shared and collaborative, to simultaneously explore multiple solutions that might fit multiple scenarios, rather than locking in to one expensive alternative that may not eventually work in one

Beyond Turf and Lawn: Poaceae in This Age of Climate Change

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.69736

91

And so, in juxtaposing the use of grasses solely for ornamental or aesthetic values with famine and food insecurity, it is clear that the moral imperative must yield to seeking and dedicating land to growing high-yielding cereal grasses first and foremost for their food, medicinal and nutritional values. If by chance such grasses have additional values that might meet aesthetic, social and recreational needs, then all-the-better, as in the past, this was commonplace as documented for one area of the Mediterranean [29], or in the cottage gardens that evolved in Britain.

*Certain cereals and pulses (legumes) were domesticated in very ancient times. In about 8000 BC in the Fertile Crescent of the Near and Middle East (present-day Syria, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Israel), wheats, barley, lentil, pea, bitter vetch, chickpea, and possibly faba bean, were brought into cultivation by the Neolithic people. These crops spread from the point of origin. Archaeological evidence indicates that the wheats, and some of the legumes, had reached Greece by 6000 BC and evidence of their presence within that millennium has been found in the Danube Basin, the Nile valley, and the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan). Dispersal continued through Europe, the crops reaching Britain and Scandinavia in 4,000-2,000 BC. There was quite a hiatus in this dispersal until the sixteenth and following centuries when, following the exploration and colonization of various countries, wheat species were taken to* 

During the Paleolithic (Stone Age), which began around 2.5 million years BCE and lasted until the global advent of agriculture in various unglaciated places around 10,000 years ago, wild grass seed from many species was gathered from the landscape for food [5, 31]. It has been previously thought that '*seeds and beans were rarely eaten and never in large amounts on a daily basis'* in the Paleolithic [32, p. 75]. Recent archaeology at Paleolithic sites in Southern Italy has now found evidence that by 32,600 BCE, hunter-gatherers were gathering substantial quantities of wild grains, primarily temperate cool climate *Avena* (oat) species, and had devised

Around 8000 BCE, the process of selecting best-performing grains led to the domestication of some cereal crops that were cultivated in the Middle East, and then distributed westwards into Africa, and eastwards to South Asia. As glacial ice retreated, domesticated grains moved north into Europe to replace those wild gathered from around 5500 to 5000 BCE [32, 34]. About the same time that wheats (einkorn [*Triticum monococcum* L.], emmer [*T. dicoccum* Schrank ex Schübl.] and barley [*Hordeum vulgare* L.]) were domesticated, domestication of two other Poaceae, rice (*Oryza sativa* L.) in China and maize (*Zea mays* L.) in Mesoamerica, was also occurring [24]. Although Poaceae is but fifth largest of the plant families, the top four

*North and South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.* [30, p. xxviii]

stone pestle-grinder tools for the conversion of the grain to flour [33].

region, but may show promise in another.

**2. Historical perspective on Poaceae as food**

Meanwhile, the privileged developed world needs to re-assess their relationship with grass simply as garden bling or amenity, and learn to associate grass with edible cereals, multifunctionality and survival. There is, for example, an urgent need to reduce and transition from turf seed production, the majority of which is produced in Oregon, to growing sufficient and locally specific climate-adapted cereals [18]. This would remove the burden of, for example, the US importing cereal products from climate-vulnerable countries, while reducing pressure on its own low climate-adaptive southeastern region, which will become an unreliable source of wheat in extreme drought episodes. Despite the US being a major wheat exporter, *Farming Monthly National* [19] reported the export of 63,000 metric tonnes of feed wheat, that is, wheat to feed livestock, from the UK to the US in 2016.

In forecasting shifting climate scenarios to 2070, it was found that Poaceae as a family is unlikely to adapt through climate niche change and migration to more amenable habitat [20]. This is particularly troublesome given that maize, rice and wheat are not only the major plants cropped globally, they currently account for 89% of all cereal production, and supplied 42% of all the calories consumed by humans in 2009 [21]. Instead, seed saving and banking of landraces and non-domesticated species, combined with assisted migration that mimics natural range expansion to safe sites, may become an active management strategy to protect biodiversity, and the food potential of species for the future [22]. It appears crucial to the search for more robust species from the wild to avoid the genetic bottlenecks that occurred through polyploidization events in the domestication of wheat [23]. Before the selection of a few species that led to complete domestication, experimentation with multiple grass species occurred in multiple places across the Fertile Crescent region for centuries [24]. Even then, at the end of the day, looking for new grasses with the potential to replace the staple grains of the past 20,000 plus years may be an exercise in futility (or another wicked problem), if the survival of all Poaceae in these times of climate change is threatened [20].

The challenge is further exacerbated by the conversion of global grassland ecosystems to other land uses, resulting in their degradation, and loss to urbanization [25]. Examples from dry grassland ecosystems on various continents provide a somewhat daunting perspective on the magnitude of effort required to repair landscapes needed for various ecosystem services, including food production [26]. And for additional insight regarding scale, over a period of 12 years more than 500,000 kg of seed from around 250 species was harvested to restore 90 km<sup>2</sup> of Minnesota tallgrass prairie, and that a typical year in which 1000 hectares were replanted '*required roughly 13,000 kg of seed, approximately 5% (640 kg) of which was hand collected'* [27, p. 3075].

Resilience then, in this age of climate change, means that if plants cannot adapt fast enough, humans have to step up and adapt their behaviours, personally and collectively. Every food security issue must be addressed globally, as is the United Nations in attempting to mitigate the present Sudan Famine crisis which has displaced 1.6 million people from East Africa [28]. All resilience and survival efforts must be multi-directional, multi-pronged, shared and collaborative, to simultaneously explore multiple solutions that might fit multiple scenarios, rather than locking in to one expensive alternative that may not eventually work in one region, but may show promise in another.

And so, in juxtaposing the use of grasses solely for ornamental or aesthetic values with famine and food insecurity, it is clear that the moral imperative must yield to seeking and dedicating land to growing high-yielding cereal grasses first and foremost for their food, medicinal and nutritional values. If by chance such grasses have additional values that might meet aesthetic, social and recreational needs, then all-the-better, as in the past, this was commonplace as documented for one area of the Mediterranean [29], or in the cottage gardens that evolved in Britain.
