Mitch Hunter and the U of MN Forever Green Initiative
Good day, and welcome to the University of Minnesota Cropcast from the University of Minnesota Department of Agronomy and Extension. My name is Dave Nicolai with the University of Minnesota. I am a crops educator in Extension and my co host today is doctor Seth Naeve. Seth is University of Minnesota Soybean Extension Specialist. And Seth, we're privileged to have one of our newest faculty, so to speak, in the department.
Dave Nicolai:I want to introduce our associate director of the Forever Green Initiative here at the University of Minnesota, Mitch Hunter. Welcome, Mitch.
Mitch Hunter:Hey. Thanks for having me.
Dave Nicolai:Let's start off a little bit, Mitch, with a little bit of your background, where you were in terms of where you grew up, went to school, education, and maybe kind of finish up with how did you end up here at the University of Minnesota?
Mitch Hunter:Sure. Yeah. So I'm I'm kind of a hybrid in a lot of different ways. I'm I'm kind of half city kid and half farm kid, half, you know, faculty member and researcher type and half change maker type, and I'm also, kinda half Aggie and half environmentalist. So my background, spans a lot of those areas.
Mitch Hunter:I grew up mostly in Plymouth, Minnesota, but, when I was born, my parents were still farming in Northwest Illinois. And so I had a lot of time as a kid going back down to grandma and grandpa's farm, you know, corn soybeans, cattle, horses. My grandpa was a veterinarian, so he had racehorses and and raised, racehorse foals. And that really set me on this path, I think, of being passionate about agriculture. I got to go to college for my first two years at this really amazing place called Deep Springs College out in Eastern California.
Mitch Hunter:Nobody's ever heard of it. My my class was 12 people. So it's it's the smallest college in the country, and it's on a working cattle ranch. So we had 300 head of cattle, an alfalfa farm, a big garden, totally isolated in the middle of nowhere, so trying to be as self sufficient as we could. And as a student, I would, you know, do classes in the morning, go do go work on the farm in the afternoon, do my homework at night, and that was just an awesome experience.
Mitch Hunter:So it was also, in a place where, you know, to do agriculture right and protect the environment is a little bit tricky. It's a high desert, fragile. We were grazing, and it's easy to overgraze. But with the right management, we were able to see that our grazing was actually pretty beneficial, for for the native species around there, the plants, the animals. There's a toad that only lives in that valley and, actually responded well to grazing.
Mitch Hunter:So that really set me on this path of trying to figure out how do we do agriculture in a way that's beneficial for the environment. I'd originally thought I wanted to do that through policy, so I got a political science degree, worked in policy in DC for a little bit. Turns out that's pretty frustrating work, and hard to make a lot of progress. And so I, kinda had the realization that rather than beating my head against congress for my whole career, I wanted to go figure out ways to do it better in the real world, and that led me on the path to being an agronomist. So I went to Penn State for my PhD, and then ultimately wanted to come home to Minnesota.
Mitch Hunter:And it just so happened, I I'm I'm just feel so lucky that this Forever Green Initiative, was in place. I'll tell you a little bit about the history, but, really what it was to me is that somebody else, had that insight I had, but had it about a 100 times better. Figured out that what you need to do to reconcile and and make agriculture work better for the environment is come up with new crops that are productive, that can be profitable, that can inherently give us the benefits for soil and water. And that's what ForeverGreen is about and so that's why I'm excited to be back here now working with ForeverGreen.
Dave Nicolai:So maybe a little bit more detail on your timeline. When did you start here at the University of Minnesota? Did you come directly from Penn State or were you employed other places?
Mitch Hunter:I did actually. I came straight from Penn State for a postdoc So I got my PhD, and then I came for a year or so of research on Kernza, Kernza perennial grain, which is one of our flagship crops. Did that for a year and then took a different job for a few years. Basically basically skipped, being at the you during the pandemic. I was about a half mile away in my back bedroom working remotely for another organization called American Farmland Trust.
Mitch Hunter:I'm doing, research with them. And then about a year and a half ago, this job that I'm in now, the associate director job came up, and I immediately jumped on it. I knew this was my passion, and I was really excited to come back and have this
Dave Nicolai:role.
Seth Naeve:It's really nice when things work out. I I think timing wise with people, it's the biggest challenge I have as as as a manager of a small lab is when when everything when the planets align, it really works well. So I'm I'm really glad. I hadn't heard you encapsulate your history quite like that, but I I really appreciate how well things fell in in line for you. It's it's interesting that, it's really interesting where you are in the as a position within Forevergating initiative.
Seth Naeve:We're gonna talk a little bit more about it. But the fact that you could come in at a at a really pivotal time, I think, is really critical for both the organization and for you as well.
Dave Nicolai:Well things had already started here when you when you started in terms of that. Do you want to give us a little bit of an overview of what was going on at the time when you arrived here and and then we'll get on to a little talk a little bit more about what's happening now but maybe go back and provide a a base sketch here for folks in terms of of that and any history that you wanna bring in.
Mitch Hunter:Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm, again, standing on the shoulders of giants here. The 2 geniuses that got this going are Don Wise and Nick Jordan. So they're both faculty members here at Agronomy Plant Genetics, and they've been working on ForeverGreen or similar concepts for over 30 years.
Mitch Hunter:The big inspiration goes back to Don's work, up in Roseau County with the, grass seed growers. So he came in as a weed scientist, you know, herbicide chemist, which is not what your average person on the street is gonna say, oh, that's a sustainable agriculture person. Right? That's not the stereotype. But he came in to solve a problem that, growers were having with herbicide resistant weeds, making it difficult for them to produce perennial ryegrass seed.
Mitch Hunter:He figured it out. He put out new varieties that were adapted, that were successful and productive. Those are now some of the most profitable crops grown in Roseau County. And what he saw is you put out a good, you know, high performing, profitable perennial crop. The farms grow it.
Mitch Hunter:And then you've got perennials on the landscape, and you get all the environmental benefits that come from having perennials. So that was like the moment that then led Don and Nick as partners on this long, long journey of figuring out how do we replicate that model. You know, 30 years ago, people would talk about what's our 3rd crop for Minnesota, or the Midwest getting in addition to corn and soybeans. And over time, it became clear that you you don't just want a 3rd crop. You want a 4th and a 5th and a 6th, and, different crops that fit different niches in our state, both what works in cropping systems, what works for the environment of different parts of the state, and also what works in the market.
Mitch Hunter:Because, you know, market demands for food and feed and fuel, etcetera, are diverse. So we need a wide range of crops, to meet those demands. And over time, Don and Nick have developed a portfolio of crops. We're up over 15 species now. And the way we work is that we've got teams of researchers at the university, that go generally from the really basic stuff, plant genomics, plant breeding, so making those crops higher performing, higher yielding, etcetera, Agronomics, how do you manage it?
Mitch Hunter:The soil and water science, you know, what do you get out of it as far as the environmental impacts? And then we go, which is pretty unusual, and we bring in food science and biosystems engineers, bioproducts engineers. What are you gonna make with this stuff? Because farmers can't grow it if there's no market. So so that's unique in itself.
Mitch Hunter:But then really getting outside the box as far as what universities tend to do, we have a commercialization team that goes the next step and brings these innovations outside the university, in 2 big ways. One of them is working with farmers, helping with adoption, providing technical assistance, doing doing derisking. So we have a state funded program that will put a little money, in the pot if farmers are are willing to try this and they have they have some challenges. So there's the farmer side, and then there's the market side. And so we also have a a small team of people who are out working with companies, figuring out with them how do we develop a product related to, you know, let's say, Kernza or winter camelina or hazelnut or whatever, whatever species we're focused on to build the market pull.
Mitch Hunter:You have to have that pull from the marketplace or there's gonna be no opportunity for farmers to grow these crops in a profitable way.
Seth Naeve:Yeah. I think, some of the, one of the reasons why I think the the ForeverGreen initiative is so broadly appreciated in the in the academic community is that, it's the model. It's not just what you're doing in terms of of your goals, but the fact that you've identified a weakness in the university systems and that we can move things from basic science into the applied arena. We've always thought that that that's good enough, that there'd be as long as you do a good job, the companies are gonna pick this up or or private or publics, other. Somebody else will take the technology and just make the next step with it.
Seth Naeve:And I think you've you know, through through experience, you've really determined that that's not always the case, and in many cases, it's not the case. And that for good and big things to happen, that you need that other that other pull, that full pipeline. So maybe you can expand a little bit more on that. I think maybe this chicken and an egg piece about building something and having both a demand and a and a supply side is really interesting to me. So maybe maybe others might appreciate that too.
Mitch Hunter:Absolutely. That's that's been an insight that I think is pretty critical. We we don't have it all figured out. Building markets is very challenging work, but I think, my colleague, Colin Kuraton, who's our director of commercialization, adoption, and scaling, he says it well, and I'll try to paraphrase him. Basically, you know, companies out there, especially bigger companies, aren't really that good at innovating.
Mitch Hunter:They're big behemoths, and it's hard for them to just take a new technology and bolt it on or integrate it directly into their work. Oftentimes, their r and d is focused on troubleshooting, cost savings, that sort of thing, especially in the food industry. So a lot of innovation happens, by startups. And we have spawned a a good handful of startups, a farmer led co op, a food company around Kernza, a food company focused on hybrid hazelnuts. There's a there's a coop up in Roseau County around the grass seed industry.
Mitch Hunter:And those have been entities that are small and nimble. They can quickly, you know, get it, basically, if they understand the value of the technology, take some risks, make it work. And and in some cases, you know, like in the technology sector, what happens is that big companies acquire the start ups, and then that's how they get their innovation. We could see that happening in this sector as well, in this work with, with new crops. But, really, the the key point is that you find the people who are willing to innovate.
Mitch Hunter:So we're doing a little bit of that from within the university, but, ultimately, there's only so far we can go. And we really need to make the bridge, take that technology, and, you know, develop relationships with business people and entrepreneurs and and and entrepreneurial farmers too, so that they're not having to just try to take something off the shelf or read a research paper, but we can be the translators, and help help people see and develop those market opportunities. You know one of
Dave Nicolai:the things that we talk about with growers oftentimes and in traditional agriculture is diversity and obviously having more than a monoculture or more than a continuous crop and say for example whatever it might be. But you've experienced these challenges obviously, with the initiative and in in terms like any other, growth and organization. You wanna talk a little bit about some of those. I mean, I I think people are familiar with the term, Kearnsen. Maybe we should lay the groundwork here a little bit about where that came from, but what are some of the challenges that you've experienced and and what are some things that you had have done to quote pivot, so to speak, in there and in creating that and not to ride, you know, just that one horse all the time here in terms of that, but think about other other things.
Dave Nicolai:So, you know, maybe not to be on the on the negative side, but, you know, you've had to adapt.
Mitch Hunter:Absolutely. Well, I think the biggest initial challenge was just validating the idea or socializing the idea that we could really benefit both agriculture and the environment by bringing in other crops. You know, there's a lot to love about the cropping system that we have as far as productivity, and, you know, profitability is a year to year thing. But there's a system out there with between crop insurance and other federal programs that, you know, keeps things relatively stable when you're dealing with the bigger commodity crops. And so just getting some traction on the idea of let's entertain alternatives, let's give farmers additional options, additional tools in the toolbox, That took a lot of work.
Mitch Hunter:And that was, you know, decades of effort by Don and Nick and many, many other partners who are not directly with the Forever Green Initiative, but who've been essential over time. So just wanna make that point first, and and then I think it's a great, talking about Kernza is a great object lesson. So, just a little bit of background. Kernza is really a paradigm shifting crop. Everything that we grow right now in the grains space is an annual.
Mitch Hunter:So you plant it once, it grows, you harvest it, and it's dead. And you don't get any soil cover, any living roots beyond when you harvest. And so the concept is to shift that and use perennial crops to grow grains. And so about 4 decades ago, this this work cut off the ground, with the Rodale Institute out east. They identified this species, intermediate wheatgrass.
Mitch Hunter:Perennial grass species, distant distant relative of wheat that's native to Eurasia. They said, hey. This is pretty productive. Produces a lot of biomass, which gives you maybe a dual use forage use, and the seeds are are decently big. And then the kicker was that it actually tastes pretty good.
Mitch Hunter:So they early on, they realized this can't taste like, you know, the the grass in your lawn, or this isn't gonna go anywhere. So they identified the species. About 10 years later, the land institute in Kansas took it up as a research project. And then in around 2010, we sent a a student, a graduate of this program here, Lee DeHaan, down there to to the Land Institute. He became their lead guy on Kernza or on intermediate wheatgrass, and he also coined the name Kernza.
Mitch Hunter:So Kernza evokes kernel because it's, you know, being used as a grain, and, you know, it's just kind of a a a unique name to give to that grain. And Lee has been back and forth. He's done some work back here, and then the work has really spread. We've got a a breeding program, a very dedicated breeding program here. We've got agronomy, soil and water science, food science, and a whole lot of partners around the country, Madison, Utah State, even folks internationally as well.
Mitch Hunter:And and we're on kind of the tail end of a $10,000,000 federal grant that has been developing Kearns. So a whole lot of work has gone into it. We have made a lot of progress on the germplasm side. We've reduced, lodging a lot. We're starting to improve free threshing so that it comes out of the hulls easily.
Mitch Hunter:Grain size, yield, some of those things are are all coming along. But it's still you know, you think we've been at it in some form for 40 years? Compare that to 10,000 plus years for wheat, barley, corn, etcetera. So we're early on the journey, and we've been pretty audacious. You know?
Mitch Hunter:We could have said, hey. This needs a 100 years of university research before we even talk about farmers growing it. But people are excited. They want to try it. And so about 5 years ago, we released our first variety.
Mitch Hunter:It's called Minnesota Clearwater. It's been out with farmers over that time. We've had a lot of, interest. I think 30 plus farmers have in Minnesota, have at least tried it and more in other parts of the country. And it's led to a whole lot of products.
Mitch Hunter:There's been over 50 Kernza products released, and there's 5 or so that are national. There's a Kodiak, if you know Kodiak pancakes, they've got a Kernza product. Cascadian Farm is a General Mills brand. General Mills was an early supporter of Kernza. They've got a cereal that's in every Whole Foods store and is expanding to Giant stores and some other more mainstream grocery stores.
Mitch Hunter:There's, you know, a few more and then a ton of local products, a lot of beer, a lot of bakeries. So the interest in the demand is there, or or, you know, certainly, the interest is there, but we've been in an interesting spot as far as demand. Early on, there was a lot of interest in demand and very little production. And so a lot of companies got turned off. Well, I guess we just can't do Kerns if there's no supply.
Mitch Hunter:And then we got into the spot where enough farmers came online that we had a decent amount of production, and then the demand side had gotten a little shy. And and what we're seeing right now is that starting to correct itself. So if you've got organic Kernza grain, there's a market, and those are that grain is moving. If you've got conventional turns of grain, that's where we're really needing to pivot more, and that's where we're also seeing entrepreneurship come online that's beginning. I'm not gonna promise that it's all solved, but it's beginning to create a market and start to move that conventional grain, to consumers who are really inspired by the story that we can keep our soil covered all year round.
Mitch Hunter:We got a perennial grain that has 10 foot deep roots. Those things are a massive sponge. They're gonna take up any nutrients that get close, any nitrate. We've seen really good success as far as minimizing nitrate leaching. And also just the concept of being more perennial, mimicking the prairies that used to be here more than we can in our typical crops.
Mitch Hunter:So there's a lot of interest in demand out there. It's really more about aligning the market and the production and moving
Seth Naeve:the products. So I I would love to spend our whole time on this market side. It's it's so interesting to me because I've, you know, I've been living in the soybean world and living in trans fats and and and high oleic soybeans. And and the the number of dollars spent by the US soybean industry to launch high oleic is is astounding. And so, and and it's been very successful, or or at least moderately successful, depending on on who you, look to and who you ask.
Seth Naeve:But it it shows the challenges in the in the food industry. It's it's we we, as agronomist, always think that there's gonna be somebody's just gonna love this stuff. We're gonna make something better, and everybody's gonna grab it and pull it through the system. Mhmm. And then the the food folks can seems like they can always find another option that's either cheaper or more consistent or more available or and the other side of this I'm I'm sorry to rail on this so long, but the other side of this is the the ingredient side of these food companies.
Seth Naeve:The the cost is so small, but yet, the the the margins are narrow for those companies. So they still need to watch every investment that they put in the inside of these or in in all their ingredients, I should say.
Mitch Hunter:Mhmm.
Seth Naeve:So it's it's it's a challenge that gets, I think we see it every time with a new product, and and you're experiencing exactly what we've seen on large and small scales with every new, type of of, food ingredient that we've had coming out. And it's it's unfortunate that it's it's so hard to push things through or pull things through or or
Mitch Hunter:Mhmm.
Seth Naeve:The combination. But, I think every one of your experiences makes us smarter and better at the next one. Is that do you think that's true within ForeverGreen Initiative? Do you think you think the next one will be easier for you because of what you've done with with, with Kernza?
Mitch Hunter:Absolutely. Yeah. And and every crop's different. So the types of markets that you're dealing with, I think we'll get into our winter camelina and Pennycrest work in a minute. That's totally different.
Mitch Hunter:The market is there. Companies are screaming for that stuff, but getting the, you know, the earlier stages in the supply chain all lined up to deliver at the volumes that are needed is the challenge. With Kernza, we've we got the production going, and then now we're trying to navigate the challenges in the market. I will say that the price price of Kernza has corrected. It's come down quite a bit.
Mitch Hunter:We anticipated that. We think that's gonna help. So there's there's a learning right there of making sure that upfront you're really doing a good job of assessing what the market can bear, where the demand and supply curves intersect, so that you're not turning folks off in the front end. But I think the bigger the bigger learning is just to double down on the notion that you can't just stick a new product out in the market and have it fly on its own. You have to really steward it.
Mitch Hunter:Find the partners who are gonna make the right investments, who have the capacity, who have the skills, who are committed, and not just try to, you know, float it out there to a few people and see if they bite. So that's that's more of the model that we're moving towards.
Seth Naeve:So talking about planets aligning, I think I think that's an appropriate place. You you brought up the winner, oilseeds. So give us a flavor for what, what what those, winter oilseeds are that you're looking at and what niche they're fill filling out there and how the environments may be changed or the markets changed for those
Dave Nicolai:Mhmm.
Seth Naeve:Type of products recently.
Mitch Hunter:Yeah. So they're kind of the other side of the coin. We talked a bit about perennials with Kernza. Obviously, they give you soil cover all year round. Another way to get soil cover all year round is by planting a winter crop after you harvest your summer crop and then going right into the next summer crop.
Mitch Hunter:And so we put those two strategies together under this umbrella that we called continuous living cover. Having a living productive crop growing on your land all year round. And so the winter oil seeds fall into the 2nd bucket. They're winter annuals. They're like a cover crop, but you harvest them.
Mitch Hunter:And, you know, cover crop acreage increased a tiny bit over the last 5 years, nowhere near what we'd like to see for soil and water protection and other benefits. We think that farmers are gonna make that shift in a big way when it pays. And so we need to have cover crops that have a financial incentive to grow them, that you can harvest, and and make money on growing them if we wanna see this on a big scale. And that's really where these winter oil seeds fit in. So there's 2 species.
Mitch Hunter:We kinda lump them together. One of them is camelina. That's been a crop for, you know, 100 or 1000 of years in Europe as an oil seed, when we're kinda rediscovering it and adapting it to Minnesota. And the other one is pennycress, which any farmer listening will know is a a annoying weed, but it's very winter hardy. It produces high yields of oil seeds, and we had domesticated it so that it's not weedy anymore.
Mitch Hunter:It doesn't make a seed bank. The seed pods don't shatter. And so we're working on advancing both of these species at the same time. And we've been doing that for at least 10 years, really from the perspective of these are a great cover crop. They make oil.
Mitch Hunter:Maybe that can be the next canola oil for food and that sort of thing. Well, that was a good idea, but what we didn't anticipate is even better, and that came around in the last few years with this huge focus on sustainable aviation fuel. All of a sudden, every big food and ag company wants to get their hands on the oil from these crops because it's a perfect feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel. It's got a very low carbon intensity. You can convert that oil directly into jet fuel or renewable diesel, drop in fuels that you can just run like regular old jet fuel or diesel.
Mitch Hunter:And the demand for that is almost infinite. You think about all the planes that we fly, every major airline has made a commitment to reduce, their greenhouse gas emissions, to move to sustainable aviation fuel by 2050. We're talking 1,000,000,000 of gallons just for aviation as well as, you know, billions more for heavy duty trucks and maritime and all the things, all the all the parts of the transportation sector that we won't be able to electrify. You know, the the the air of the electric car is coming. That's gonna affect transportation fuels in a big way, but there still are big sectors out there that are difficult to electrify.
Mitch Hunter:So that's that's the the excitement and the driver right now between Camelina or behind, Camelina and Pennycrest.
Dave Nicolai:These crops though are not just native here obviously and growing in Minnesota, they're growing in other places in United States and in the world. What has Forever Green Initiative here and University of Minnesota really targeted in terms of genetic development and breeding and so forth. Maybe talk a little bit about that. You mentioned that we develop. Can you provide a little bit more detail on what's been our approach here in terms of our scientists here at the University of Minnesota?
Mitch Hunter:Yeah. Absolutely. The the breeding is the core. If you don't have a high functioning variety, nothing else matters, really. So, the approach on the 2 has been very different because they're coming from very different places, but the the targets are the same.
Mitch Hunter:Have to have winter hardiness, obviously. That's our big challenge. The other big challenge is you have to be able to harvest them early enough in the year to get a second crop. So the system that we're targeting here would, grow soybean crop following these winter oil seeds. Right now, the maturity date is too late to be able to double crop soybeans.
Mitch Hunter:You're gonna be planting in mid June or early July. The yield hit is too large. So what we're developing is a relay system, that has worked on research stations and has worked on real farms too, where you grow the oil seed, you plant soybean at the regular time in the spring into that stand of oil seeds, and then you're able to harvest the oil seed off the top and the soybean takes off. But the point is that that doesn't work so well the later the maturity is. So our breeders are driving maturity as early as possible.
Mitch Hunter:And maybe someday they'll be able to get it early enough that you can you can double crop soybean, and that would be a heck of a lot easier for farmers to deal with. So, obviously, yield. So winter hardiness, earliness, obviously, yield. Seed size is important. These are both very tiny seeded crops, smaller than canola, more like flax.
Mitch Hunter:You know, we tell farmers you gotta have a roll of duct tape out when you're, getting ready to harvest these. Seal every single hole and every piece of equipment that's gonna handle them, or you're gonna have a pile on the ground next to your bin or next to your your wagon or whatever it is. So, you know, there's there's challenges. It's that's certainly not, just a quick and easy switch from the crops that we know right now. But in the big picture, you can plant them with a regular drill.
Mitch Hunter:You can harvest them with a regular combine. So some tweaks, some adjustments, and farmers ought to be able to grow these crops without a huge capital investment upfront.
Seth Naeve:One of the, interesting things I was gonna ask you about this interplay between the drivers of new crops. So the way I see it is there's there's there's multiple factors why farmers would want a new crop, but I think what we're talking about primarily is related to environmental benefits to to some of these crops for for the farmer. Then there's the economic side, and the economics can be driven by the demand side, or it could be policy related.
Mitch Hunter:Mhmm.
Seth Naeve:And we talked a little bit about policy that you got a little frustrated with working on the policy side before. What's interesting to me about this oilseed business is, basically, it's an interaction between all of those things. You're creating policy through environmental benefits, is driving an economic demand for this product. And so so in some ways, you've got a convergence of all the drivers all come about. And, the renewable diesel, renewable aviation fuel thing is is, really an interesting space for for all of us, and I I can really appreciate it from the soybean side.
Seth Naeve:And
Dave Nicolai:Mhmm.
Seth Naeve:And, especially on, the way the market is now moving to value, different inputs very differently. And so it's I I just I keep watching what you guys are doing, and I think you're at such an interesting time and space here. And and, Don and Nick and now you have really positioned yourself well for, getting into this area. I guess the question is, I heard that there was a there was a press release a couple weeks ago, and there's some new exciting news from, the Forever Green Initiative in terms of partnerships. Maybe you can mention something about them.
Mitch Hunter:Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. That was really exciting. We got to share the news that Cargill has invested, through their foundation, 2 and a half $1,000,000 in our research.
Mitch Hunter:So that's a a 5 year grant. That's an awesome shot in the arm. You know, up until now, most of our funding has come from the state of Minnesota. So thank you taxpayers, and voters and and also, you know, federal grants and lots of other sources, but this really validates that those state investments were worth it, and it helps match those and leverage off of those. It's gonna advance our basic biological understanding of these crops.
Mitch Hunter:And that'll benefit our breeding programs and other breeding programs around the world, really, As well as getting some, you know, more we've we've done some agronomic work, but getting really into the nitty gritty. How do you make this work on a farm? And so we wanna be able to translate that out. Hopefully, I can be back with extension again, getting the word out to farmers when we have more of those results to share. But, you know, it's also just to your point, Seth, about the stars aligning.
Mitch Hunter:It's it's a validation that, big players in the market see this coming. And you're absolutely right that, there's some some really positive unintended consequences, I guess, I would say. You know, there is a policy put in place to address carbon emissions in the aviation industry. What does that have to do with cover crops? You know?
Mitch Hunter:But in this case, we're able to leverage it and those sorts of policies, we think are gonna be the biggest policy drivers ever for cover crop adoption in the state of Minnesota. Because we have these winter oil seeds that are positioned to take advantage of it. Also wanna say, in addition to that grant, we've also been partnering with Cargill on some piloting. So there's over 2,000 acres across Minnesota and the Dakotas right now, that are growing winter camelina. We're all anxiously waiting to see how it does after this non winter, but, you know, still hopeful.
Mitch Hunter:And, that was a great partnership with them. Also, our field agronomist, Matt Levitt, some folks might know him. He was with Albert Lea Seeds for about 10 years, or more, and he's been doing a ton of outreach. He also is the the point person for our program to provide technical assistance. So if you start growing camelina or Kernza or 2 other crops, winter barley and hybrid winter rye, you can get in touch.
Mitch Hunter:We can you know, Matt can help you with a lot of the agronomic questions you might have, and we've got the financial assistance to go with it. So just a mini plug for that program. You can Google Matt Levitt ForeverGreen or, or my name, Mitch Hunter ForeverGreen. Get in touch. We'd love to connect with growers who are interested in that.
Seth Naeve:Yeah. So your website is, the most of this will happen through the your website. Right? So you have have Forever Green Initiative.
Mitch Hunter:Yep. Yeah. Google Forever Green Initiative. You can find this, And, yeah, we're not we're not hard to not hard to find.
Dave Nicolai:Yep. In in addition to Matt, anybody else that you wanna mention? Obviously, initiative like this takes a lot of people. Mhmm.
Mitch Hunter:Yeah. I mean, we got a great team. So Don and Nick, of course, who I already mentioned. Colin is the the leader of the commercialization side. And then on the farmer outreach side, there's Matt, there's Sienna Nasser.
Mitch Hunter:She did her master's here on one of our forever green crops, and now she's helping to administer that same program that I was mentioning. So, really, she's she's the one that you'd work with a lot to get enrolled in that program. We call it the ECO program, environmental and economic clusters of opportunity, e e c o. So you can also Google that and find the information that way. And then we've got 2 people on the commercial or on the kind of the market building side.
Mitch Hunter:Andrew Leach is our sustainable commercialization associate, plays a big role in our agroforestry work. So we haven't talked about it much, but we work with hybrid hazelnuts. We work with elderberry, and he's, he's working on those projects as well as perennial flax and other species that we've got in the hopper. And then Catherine Chute is, I believe, our newest team member. She's got an MBA background, was working at 3 m before coming to us, and she's on point to build the market, reach out to companies large and small and start ups, help them, come on board as partners, hosting a big event soon with a major, animal products company that maybe I shouldn't name on the air, but, you know, exciting stuff happening of of companies.
Mitch Hunter:And, you know, what's really driving it is that they too are trying to reduce their environmental footprint, be more sustainable, and they're looking to our crops as a potential solution for that, which is really exciting.
Dave Nicolai:So thank you Mitch. It's really a good opportunity for you to come in today and talk with us a little bit more about the Forever Green Initiative here at the University of Minnesota as well as the projects, the people involved. It's very educational. I think it helps provide a good baseline for understanding for our listeners here in state of Minnesota and the upper Midwest. So thanks again for your time.
Dave Nicolai:We do appreciate that. And again if they need any more information, go to the Rivergreen website and you can certainly find that contact information and more about the crops as well. This has been Dave Nicolai with the University of Minnesota Cropcast along with my co host Doctor. Seth Nave, University of Minnesota Extension Soybean Specialist. We appreciate you taking the time, to participate and listen to us here at Cropcast, and we look forward to talking to you again in the future.
