Continuous living cover crops, the farmers who grow them and the work of Forever Green were all featured in two recent news stories.
"Tackling the 'big brown spot'" from MPR News' Kirsti Marohn describes how living cover could play a role in significantly reducing nitrate pollution in Minnesota.
"A new report from Forever Green and Friends of the Mississippi analyzed the environmental and economics impacts of planting continuous living cover crops compared to the “big brown spot,” as it calls cropland left barren and unprotected.
It found that if adopted on a medium-range number of acres across the state, they have the potential to reduce nitrogen loss by more than 20 percent, soil erosion by 35 percent and increase farmers’ net profits by about 20 percent by 2050.
“We would really be able to measure the impact of these cropping systems on the landscape, in farmers’ pocketbooks and in our water quality,” [Friends of the Mississippi River's Trevor] Russell said.
You can find the full story here via MPR News.
And heard on NPR's "Morning Edition," another story dives into the interest Kernza is receiving from breweries and distilleries. It includes an interview with University of Minnesota agronomist Jake Jungers, as well as Tessa Peters of The Land Institute.
Says Jungers in the piece:
A lot of good could be done if Kernza could be integrated into a lot of different products in a way that required much more acreage - hundreds of thousands to a million acres.