During this legislative session, the Forever Green had two valuable chances to update lawmakers on the substantial progress being made in the world of continuous living cover.
The first hearing came on Feb. 25 in the Senate Agriculture Committee. A replay is available to watch here. It featured testimony from two of FGI’s leaders, including Co-Director Dr. Mitch Hunter, who highlighted the “really great things” the initiative has been able to do as a result of recent funding from the Clean Water Council and Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources.
“We’ve built over 15 different multidisciplinary crop development teams,” Hunter told the committee. “We’ve supported 65 graduate students which, when I saw that number my eyes popped … That’s a lot. We’ve released eight crop varieties including four just this last year, and we’ve funded close to 100 research projects.
“So we’ve got a really great system for using those resources to drive progress on this work.”
At the same hearing, Forever Green Director of Commercialization, Adoption, and Scaling Colin Cureton highlighted the success of the EECO Program.
“The program has supported roughly 9,000 acres of new CLC crops across 200 fields and about 80 unique growers,” Cureton said, noting that the significant growth of the program in recent years “signals early traction with Minnesota farmers.”
Also showing up to speak to Forever Green’s work were Paul Novotony, a Chatfield-based farmer who’s among the early adopters of winter camelina, and a wealth of knowledge on the real-world challenges and opportunities for early-adopters of this winter-hardy oilseeds; and Peter Frosch, the CEO of Greater MSP, which positions winter-hardy oilseeds as a centerpiece of its long-range strategy.
During the hearing, Sen. Judy Seeberger relayed an anecdote from a recent town hall she held, which pivoted from discussion of the problems facing Minnesotans to the optimistic story of Forever Green.
"I said, you know what? Let me tell you a little bit about what I work on in ag," recalled Seeberger. "And it wasn’t the conversation they expected to have, but I talked about the Forever Green program and I talked about Kernza®, and by the end of that conversation people felt happy, and they were surprised because we do other things here at the Capitol other than fight about controversial issues; we do wonderful things like support the Forever Green program."
As part of the hearing, Forever Green brought Kernza cereal from Cascadian Farm and dished out samples for lawmakers to try. Hunter told the committee about General Mills’ efforts to add the deep-rooted perennial grain into more products.
A couple of weeks later came the second opportunity: A hearing in the House Agriculture Committee. This time Novotny, Hunter and Cureton were joined by Ariel Kagan of the Minnesota Farmers Union. It focused on a collaborative study our groups are creating as a roadmap to reach 1 million acres of camelina in Minnesota.
Novotny recalled first planting Kernza in 2015, and noted how much the market has changed since.
“Now with winter camelina and its growth potential, with continued state support for supply chain and new crop development, it will be exciting to see what the future holds,” he said.
We are grateful to the members of both agriculture committees for carving out time to hear about continuous living cover advancements, market development progress and value chain investments — particularly with no connected legislation this session. We look forward to providing even more information whenever lawmakers make such a request in the future.
View a replay of the Senate hearing here, and a replay of the House hearing here.