CHATFIELD, Minn. — A small crowd has gathered on this caramel-brown tangle of fields that stretch across a small-town community to look at a red Case IH mix drive up the road. An experiment is happening on the sting of the Driftless Area in southeastern Minnesota.
The star of those few acres is winter-planted camelina, the potential wonder plant that might power the engines of the long run and clean waterways within the Midwest's karst hills. But before these sustainable opportunities can flourish, farmers must know whether the sturdy, medium-weight oilseed can actually grow throughout the region's notoriously cold winters and mild springs.
This starts with a field outside of Chatfield.
“Camelina is extremely hardy,” says Anna Teeter, latest oilseed program manager for Minnetonka-based Cargill, the worldwide commodities trader that has worked with farmers to grow camelina on 2,000 acres in Minnesota and North Dakota this yr. “Most farmers never learn how to grow a new crop.”
Like farmers within the fields around Chatfield, they primarily grow corn and soybeans, that are staple crops for animal feed and biofuels and are very profitable. But the double-cropping system has also led to polluted water and greenhouse gas emissions.
As a part of a worldwide effort to construct sustainable agriculture, advocates are pushing for higher crops that keep the bottom covered from November to April, keep groundwater stable, keep carbon out of the atmosphere and store nutrients within the soil.
Farmers said they need markets greater than programs, a refrain that Cargill officials hear loud and clear.
“We're trying to get that third crop into a two-year cycle,” said Lyle DePauw, Cargill's director of crop innovation. “I wouldn't call it commoditized yet.”
Almost 3% of Minnesota's 26 million acres of farmland are planted with environmentally friendly cover crops within the winter. Farmers often complain that it is just too cold within the region. Some also don't like growing something they’ll't bring to market. Many cover crops – akin to hairy vetch – must be removed in the summertime.
Last fall, Cargill launched the pilot project with just a few dozen growers. In February, the commodity giant announced a $2.5 million investment within the University of Minnesota's world-renowned Forever Green Initiative – an incubator for developing future agricultural crops – to develop novel oilseeds.
And on Wednesday, Cargill announced a brand new research partnership with Forever Green, drawing on technical expertise — including a laboratory in Fort Collins — to more quickly develop regenerative crops like camelina.
This is all a part of a fastidiously orchestrated dance to determine a camelina farming system, from producers to processors to buyers.
Mitch Hunter, deputy director of Forever Green, said demand for camelina had surged as industry and governments moved toward more sustainable aviation.
“You can't expand a million acres overnight,” Hunter said. “But our partnership with Cargill allows us to expand pretty damn quickly.”
For greater than a decade, the U.S. Navy has been testing the addition of camelina-derived fuel to fighter jet fuel. Since 2016, Forever Green has been breeding oilseeds—including camelina, a member of the mustard family and native to the Mediterranean—to be used in a relay cropping system with soybeans.
One problem was the scale of the seed. Camelina seeds are much smaller than soybeans. One task for the researchers, Hunter said, will probably be to breed a bigger seed that may be processed using conventional agricultural equipment. For now, a pressing plant in West Fargo will process this summer's harvest.
The farmers who’ve come forward are among the many first to see the high-potential plant growing of their fields. Cargill said it plans to extend the world of camelina planted tenfold. A second round of the pilot project will begin in August for farmers in Minnesota and the Dakotas.
“The reason is water quality,” Novotny said. “We have great water. But it's called 'young water.' When it comes to the surface in 15 years, we could drink it. But in many places it's 30 or 40 years old.”
This yr, Novotny's hilltop fields in Chatfield are certainly one of the testing grounds for camelina. He jumped back into the red mix, drove the vehicle into the sector and lowered the threshing machine.
Soon, Novotny's red mix is rolling easily across the fields like a lawnmower devouring grass, spitting out seeds from the back. Novotny stops the machine and Cargill and Forever Green employees kneel right down to inspect the harvest.
“It doesn’t look so bad,” said Teeter.
From a distance, a mother and three children watch the plants from behind the fence. It is unusual to see a harvest in the course of summer. But the ability might be the long run and protect the water until the youngsters are older.
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