There is a root that doubles the harvest of potatoes. It lives forever. Plant it once, harvest for decades. It survives cold that kills wheat, drought that turns corn to dust. And for thousands of years, it fed entire civilizations without replanting.

Then we erased it. Not because it failed. But because a crop that refuses to die, that feeds without permission, that spreads across any soil without control, cannot be owned. And what cannot be owned cannot be sold.

This is the sunchoke, also known as Jerusalem artichoke. The perennial sunflower root that Native Americans called kaishucpenauk, sun root.

THE ANCIENT FOUNDATION

Long before European contact, tribes across North America knew its power. Plant once, harvest forever. Lewis and Clark nearly starved crossing the Dakotas in 1805. Sacagawea saved them by digging sunchokes from mouse caches and roasting them over fire.