Photo gallery: A virtual tour of the Forever Green fields

We kicked off the field tour with a (delicious) tasting session — two Kernza beers from Bang Brewing and naan from Artisan Naan Bakery — both local businesses helping to launch these crops. Find more tasty products.

FMR is one of the founders of the Forever Green Partnership, a network of individuals and groups who want to see more continuous living cover on cropland. We advocate for the resources and policy that can make this vision a reality so that U of M scientists can focus on their research, FMR Executive Director Whitney Clark explained.

Most of Minnesota's 21 million acres of farmland grow annual crops like corn and soybeans. Just like an annual in your garden at home, these crops don’t come back year after year — they’re planted in late spring and harvested in the fall, and that’s it. The bare ground that's left the rest of the year causes erosion and runoff of soil and fertilizers — a leading pollution source to our metro Mississippi, as well as the dead zone downstream.

In mid May, when most fields are still bare, Kernza is already lush and green. A perennial plant related to our native prairie grasses and wheat, Kernza can stay in the ground year-round, its long roots soaking up fertilizers and anchoring the soil. (Read our report on what's possible for the river with crops like these.)

U of M Kernza researcher Prabin Bajgain talked about how their team is creating a crop that will work for Minnesota farmers and have great nutritional value, not through genetic modification, but through traditional plant breeding techniques.

The Forever Green Initiative is developing more than a dozen crops that can contribute to keeping plants in Minnesota's agricultural land all year, like this flax. It's also a perennial crop and can be harvested or grazed multiple times. Bonus: Its blossoms provide nectar for bees.

This is pennycress, one of the winter annual oilseed crops that the U of M has developed — meaning it can be planted in the fall and harvested in the spring, essentially slotting into the empty period between corn or soybeans. 

Because farmers can plant pennycress with corn and soy, they can increase profit without converting more acres into farmland, explained Associate Director of Forever Green Initiative Mitch Hunter. 

To get to our climate goals, we'll need sustainable biofuels that are both good for the river and for farmers. Pennycress and camelina are two winter oilseeds that have immense potential as low-carbon, river-friendly fuel sources.

We're not the only fans of these crops.