Month: November 2022

When you mention biological soil crusts (also known as biocrusts) to Dr. Sasha Reed, her eyes light up and a smile widens across her face. For the last 15 years, this U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) biogeochemist has been on the ground and in the lab studying these soil communities that, while small, have big potential to sustain ecosystems as our planet warms. Now, thanks to increasing focus on dryland restoration and climate change science, there are new opportunities to scale up nature-based solutions with federal funding from programs like America the Beautiful.

If you close your eyes and picture a desert landscape, you might see sparse trees or shrubs and then lots of open areas of sand among the plants. While these areas look barren, they are actually filled with life in the form of soil surface communities called biocrusts. Biocrusts are the desert’s skin—a community of lichens, mosses and cyanobacteria that live on the soil surface in places where soils are exposed to the sun. Although the organisms are small, biocrusts are estimated to cover 12 percent of Earth’s land surface and can be found on all seven continents.

These complex communities play an astonishingly important role in sustaining desert ecosystems and in protecting human health. However, until recently, they have been sorely underappreciated. A growing climate crisis for Earth’s drylands and exciting research revelations are intersecting to shine a new light on the importance of biocrusts.

Dr. Reed – along with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Northern Arizona University and Rim to Rim Restoration – leads one of the world’s largest-scale cultivations of whole biocrust communities. With funding from a Wildlife Conservation Society grant, through their Climate Adaptation Fund, and with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the team is working toward a scientific breakthrough that will benefit dryland communities around the globe.

Homebase for the project is the Canyonlands Research Center (CRC) headquartered at TNC’s Dugout Ranch near Canyonlands National Park in southeast Utah. The CRC is a collaboration of academic institutions, land managers, and state and federal research agencies working together on climate science and sustainable land management solutions. With powerful partnerships, the cutting-edge CRC research facility attracts some of the world’s leading scientists in climate change, biological soil crusts, rangeland management, dryland vegetation ecology and soil erosion.

Thirty-four percent of people on Earth live in dryland regions. These areas support 44 percent of the world’s cultivated systems and 50 percent of the world’s livestock. Yet drylands are home to the poorest and most marginalized people in the world. Experts estimate that 25 to 35 percent of Earth’s drylands are already degraded, with over 250 million people directly affected and about one billion people in over 100 countries at risk. With climate change impacts intensifying rapidly, restoration solutions for key dryland components—like biocrusts—can’t come soon enough.

“These organisms pack so much punch!” exclaims Dr. Reed with two pumping fists. Just as coral reefs are critical to marine habitats, biocrusts are the ecosystem engineer of Earth’s drylands. Biocrusts provide important services to people and nature by:

• Stabilizing Soils – Biocrusts act as a “glue” to stabilize desert soil and prevent it from blowing away. In this way, biocrusts are nature’s safeguard against dust storms that threaten human health and wildlife.
• Boosting Fertility – Biocrusts take in nitrogen and concentrates other nutrients, playing a valuable role in the diversity and productiveness of desert soils that sustain plants, wildlife and agriculture. 
• Retaining Moisture – Biocrusts increase the ability of soils to retain water from precipitation, a critical process for the entire desert ecosystem. 
• Storing carbon – Like all photosynthetic organisms, biocrusts take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, sequestering carbon in soils.

Sue Bellagamba, TNC’s Canyonlands Regional Director, who is partnering with Dr. Reed, sums it up this way: “Biocrusts are the keystone element of the landscape in the western United States. If we lose our biocrusts, we could see major impacts on soil stability, vegetation and wildlife. Restoring biocrusts is a nature-based solution for mitigating the impacts of climate change and creating resilient drylands in the face of a warmer and dryer world.”

When healthy biocrusts are doing their job, they prevent the soil loss caused by wind and rainstorms. Massive dust storms, which are increasing in frequency across the southwest United States and in other drylands around the globe, are becoming more hazardous for people. Dust from one region can travel thousands of miles. These storms can limit visibility, threatening the safety of people on our highways and wreaking havoc on the human respiratory system. The reality is that if we lose biocrusts, people could also be impacted.

A bonus benefit is carbon storage. “There’s a lot of interest in carbon sequestration to mitigate climate change and we know biocrusts can take carbon out of the atmosphere via photosynthesis. However, we need to better quantify this carbon control. Our understanding of how much carbon restored biocrusts could sequester and how climate change will affect this uptake remains exceedingly poor,” says Dr. Reed.

Emerging evidence suggests drylands play a dominant role in key aspects of Earth’s carbon cycle, helping to regulate our planet’s terrestrial carbon sink. Dr. Reed and her team are working to quantify this role and to add this quantitative understanding in the context of climate change.

For years, scientists have known biocrusts were vulnerable to long-lasting damage from tires, boots and hooves. Now, a new threat looms: climate change. As heat and drought intensify for Earth’s dryland regions, the impacts on biocrusts are raising red flags. A recent study conducted by the USGS in Utah revealed that long-term experimental climate warming resulted in the dramatic loss of biocrust mosses, as well as slowed recovery of biocrusts following disturbance. Scientists warn that in the face of a warming climate, these biocrust losses could occur around the globe.

In short: Scientists like Dr. Reed and her team have a small window of time to figure out how to protect the very fabric of dryland ecosystems.

As scientists seek ways to restore damaged biocrusts in the face of climate change, they have had both advances and setbacks. Initially encouraged to discover they could grow biocrusts in a nursery, scientists were disappointed when the nursery-grown biocrusts died after being relocated to restoration sites in the desert. What they decided was that the nursery may have made life too easy for the biocrusts.

“They withered and blew away shortly after we sprinkled them on restoration sites in drought-stricken areas, such as the western U.S.,” says Dr. Reed, with a sigh. “We asked a lot of questions and came up with an idea to grow the crusts outside so they could acclimate with the harsh climate where they face relentless sun, heat and very little water.”

Researchers grew intact crust communities on biodegradable cloth on the first biocrust farm near Moab. After 8 months, volunteers unrolled the crusts on two restoration sites. The team is now monitoring these sites to determine how well the biocrusts grow. So far, they are seeing phenomenal response and future potential to advance our ability to sustain biocrusts in the face of climate change.

This forward-thinking restoration technique holds promise for scaling up the work. The size and pace of growth at the Moab biocrust farm marked an important success for restoration science. 

“If the biocrust communities continue to succeed, it would be a significant advance in our ability to help resource managers bring back biocrust communities,” Dr. Reed notes. “People would be able to grow biocrusts without disturbing much land, a lot of new technology could take off, you could automate biocrust harvesting, increase the scale of the process, and open a really exciting new pathway for restoring much larger areas.”

Dr. Reed is animated…make that joyful. “I often study worrisome climate change impacts and threats, the pollution and damage,” she enthuses. “But this project, this is about hope. We are finding new ways to bring biocrusts back on the landscape, and it just feels so useful and so… good!”

More research and communication are imperative to building on the success in Utah. Restoring biocrusts across dryland ecosystems will look different in different places. While we still have many questions, biocrust climate science is happening in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and California, stretching all the way to Africa and Antarctica! To harness the power of biocrust knowledge and global research, a soil crust Community of Practice – called CrustNet – has been created by Dr. Reed and her collaborators. They aim to bring together biocrust researchers around to world to improve the understanding of where biocrusts are, the roles they play in diverse ecosystems and how they are responding to change. This network approach will enable learning, sharing and replicating projects.

Federal conservation programs could offer another avenue for scaling up biocrust restoration projects in the United States, providing incentives to landowners to protect and restore biocrusts, and providing support for efforts to reestablish biocrusts on degraded public lands. The America the Beautiful program offers one potential avenue of support.

In addition to scaling up biocrust restoration, increased awareness about what it is and why it’s so important is imperative. The average person has no idea what biocrusts are, which means they can’t care about it. With funds dedicated to education, partners produced a short biocrust video to educate people about these amazing and important communities.

If you want to support this effort, share a link on your organization’s social sites and with your friends and family. Though they are small, biocrusts are mighty and restoring these communities across our planet’s drylands offers a great deal of hope for Earth’s dryland ecosystems and people. 

For more information, please see our  Climate-Adapted Biocrust Restoration Fact Sheet. You can also access the current Biocrust Restoration Manual at: canyonlandsresearchcenter.org.

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Tracey Stone is an Associate Director of Communications for The Nature Conservancy.

Dr. Sasha Reed is a Biogeochemist at the United States Geological Survey.

Sue Bellagamba is the Canyonlands Regional Director at The Nature Conservancy in Utah.

The seeds of a new agricultural system are sprouting in Minnesota, one that can fight climate change using profitable new crops that keep agricultural lands covered with green, living plants year-round. Crops ranging from perennial Intermediate Wheatgrass (producing Kernza® perennial grain) to new winter annual “cash cover crops” such as winter camelina, pennycress, and winter pea have the potential to amplify carbon storage in plants and soils while also building climate resilience, protecting water quality, improving soil health, and creating new economic opportunities for rural communities. Many of these crops complement and enhance current Midwestern agriculture, whereas others offer new and exciting alternatives. All can bring greater choice to growers, new products to market, and diversification to the agricultural landscape.

The Forever Green Initiative at the University of Minnesota (UMN) is developing and scaling these crops in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, farmer groups, citizen advocates, private businesses, nonprofits, and research organizations. We write as a group of young to mid-career professionals building on groundwork laid over decades. As a group of rising leaders in this effort (among many others!), we want to highlight its recent successes, share its origin story, speak to the value of partnership in advancing climate solutions, and reflect on where we are headed. 

Recent wins

In 2022, Forever Green and its partners saw several landmark successes:

• After decades of advocacy, Forever Green was allocated permanent general funding from the Minnesota Legislature to keep developing perennial and winter annual crops. 
• Simultaneously, a diverse grassroots coalition succeeded in developing a State pilot grant program to support entrepreneurs to scale value chains for these crops. 
• A State pilot program to de-risk grower adoption and increase acreage of these new perennial and winter annual crops is also expanding.
• Nationally, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service incorporated perennial grains into the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). 
• Through the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities and the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act, USDA moved to invest billions in “climate-smart agriculture,” including crops Forever Green is developing, like winter camelina.
• In the Fall of 2022, Forever Green hosted USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service and representatives from over 30 countries to learn about these crops and their potential to address grand global challenges around soil, water, climate, and biodiversity.

These early successes have required decades of careful perennial partnership in science and society for new perennial and winter annual crops to start transitioning from ideas to reality.

Since 2022, Forever Green and its parters have also had some other big advocacy wins:

• The Minnesota Legislature has committed $6 million from the Clean Water Fund to support the Forever Green Initiative (FGI), along with an extra $1.604 million from agriculture committees. This funding ensures that vital roles like breeders, agronomists, and managers can be sustained.

• The MN Legislature also allocated $500k to the Department of Agriculture’s “Developing markets for CLC crops” grant program to support supply chain businesses. This brings the total awarded to $1m since its inception in 2022.

• Productive dialogues with the Risk Management Agency and the Natural Resources Conservation Service have aimed at streamlining the path for farmer adoption of Conservation Leverage and Collaboration (CLC) systems, which currently face disincentives due to federal regulations. As a result, NRCS has approved winter camelina and pennycress for inclusion in EQIP and CSP, two primary conservation cost-share programs (with Kernza already approved in 2022). Efforts with the Risk Management Agency regarding crop insurance coverage are ongoing and at earlier stages.

Kernza in Minnesota: A land-grant university gets behind perennial grains

Nearly 40 years ago, visionaries at The Rodale Institute and The Land Institute had the wild idea that producing grains from perennials—plants that grow for multiple years—could form the basis of more ecologically sound agriculture. Kernza® perennial grain is the first of these to reach farmers’ fields. This perennial’s deep and dense root system draws down carbon and regrows for years without the need for carbon-emitting tillage and the costs of annual replanting. It also reduces runoff and erosion, soaking up excess nutrients that can impair surface and groundwater, harm human health, and act as powerful greenhouse gasses. Recent research shows that Kernza reduces nitrogen loss by over 95% compared to corn.

_{LEFT: Kernza has roots up to 10-feet long. RIGHT: Kernza grain. Photos by: Alita Films}

Concurrent to early perennial grains breeding efforts, University of Minnesota researchers, including Dr. Don Wyse, were leading the basic science that spurred the development of a grower-owned, multi-million dollar perennial ryegrass seed industry in Northwest Minnesota. Together they learned that providing growers with a new profitable crop option was the quickest and best way to scale up the environmental benefits of perennial groundcover. Moreover, developing that new crop option required working together across disciplines and sectors. The University of Minnesota began expanding this model to other perennials and winter annuals in the early 2010s, including Kernza, in partnership with The Land Institute.

UMN Forever Green: A platform for agricultural innovation

Today, the Forever Green Initiative is a uniquely broad innovation platform that supports the research, commercialization, and societal change required to transition toward continuous-living-cover agriculture in the Upper Midwestern US. Housed at the University of Minnesota, Forever Green supports over 15 interdisciplinary crop teams of plant breeders, agronomists, soil and water scientists, food scientists, economists, and commercialization staff. In addition to Kernza, Forever Green scientists are working on:

Beyond the university’s walls, Forever Green’s unique commercialization, adoption, and scaling program supports a wide range of growers, entrepreneurs, and businesses, taking these new crops to market in the form of new food, feed, seed, industrial, and energy products–spanning baking flour to biopolymers to biofuels. A coalition of advocates called the Forever Green Partnership continues the cross-sector work of advocacy, learning together, and building momentum. Forever Green has engaged hundreds of students and early career youth throughout its structure, preparing cadres of young scientists and professionals to continue tackling grand global challenges such as climate change.

Minnesota is now a leading hub of research, development, and innovation in perennial grains. A University of Minnesota research team works closely with The Land Institute and several others to holistically tackle breeding, agronomy, environmental science, food science, and commercialization. UMN Kernza breeders are making headway, increasing grain yield by an average of 10% per breeding cycle. Sustaining this increase would mean achieving yields equivalent to wheat in under a generation–an exceptionally fast and remarkable feat in the world of plant breeding. This work has led to the release of the first commercial Kernza variety, MN-Clearwater. Minnesota also hosts the USDA-supported KernzaCAP project, integrating research, commercialization, policy, and education across multiple states. 

_{INNOVATION Perennial Pantry is a dedicated Kernza processor and food brand, taking Kernza directly from the farmer and turning it into a variety of food products. Photos by: Alita Films.}

Outside the laboratory and research plots, Minnesota farmers are growing several thousand acres of Kernza® perennial grain–one-third of all commercial Kernza acres. The state is home to a new grower-owned Kernza cooperative, a startup food company devoted to putting delicious perennial products on your plate, and numerous small and large food businesses developing new products ranging from cereal to naan to beer. 

Fertile ground for change: Developing alternatives through partnership

The seeds planted by visionary researchers would never have taken root in Minnesota without supportive state agencies, policymakers, committed advocates, and conservation-minded farmers. Their support grew from a long-standing concern that nutrient loss and erosion from Minnesota’s 20 million acres of agriculture threaten the state’s 10,000 lakes, the Mississippi River Watershed, and the people that rely on them. 

In 2004, a coalition of these entities formed a network called Green Lands Blue Waters to collaborate across sectors and states to scale up “continuous living cover” agriculture, which has been a critical partner in advancing perennial grains ever since. In the ensuing years, Minnesota advocates secured resources to develop perennial and winter annual crops from the State’s general fund, the Department of Agriculture, a unique state Clean Water Fund funded by sales tax, and a commission on natural resources funded by the state lottery. These state funds have been used to unlock 5-10 times more funding from federal, philanthropic, and other sources.

As the economic potential of these new crops became apparent, the coalition broadened to include farmers, rural economic development interests, community-based conservation organizations, and food and agriculture companies, large and small. Together, this uncommonly broad coalition has created fertile ground for innovations like Kernza and other new crops to take root. 

Carrying the torch: Voices of the next generation

Accelerating the transition

As we work to stave off climate disaster, transforming the world’s agricultural systems into a giant carbon sink is one of the most hopeful avenues for progress. We believe that advancing Forever Green agricultural systems is a key part of that transformation, and we hope this story will inspire farmers, researchers, advocates, companies, citizens, eaters, and policymakers across the U.S. and worldwide. First, to believe in wild ideas with transformational potential, and second to work together to make them a reality. Some ways you can advance this work include:

• Join your local soil health and regenerative agriculture movement, whether it’s as a citizen, consumer, employee, grower, or entrepreneur.
• Learn more about the priorities identified in Farm Bill Law Enterprise’s recent Climate and Conservation Report for the 2023 Farm Bill.
• More specifically, support continued development of perennial and winter annual crops as a climate adaptation and mitigation strategy–in Minnesota, your state, and the country.
• Show grassroots people power by signing on to the Regenerate America^TM campaign.
• Feed friends and family the message by enjoying Kernza perennial grain and similar new products at home. You can even now sign up for a monthly Perennial Share!
• Pursue an education or career that will help advance the grand transition toward a ‘forever green’ agricultural landscape.

No one effort will be sufficient to slow climate change. It will take leaders in every state, at the federal level, and in every country. It will happen in laboratories, on the land, on loading docks, lunch tables, and in legislation. It will take all our hands to lift new ways of farming that simultaneously work for growers, create value for companies, reduce emissions, and create a climate-resilient future. Join us!

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Prabin Bajgain is the Kernza breeder at the University of Minnesota and a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics.

Colin Cureton is the Director of Adoption and Scaling for the Forever Green Initiative in the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics.

Jess Gutknecht is an Associate Professor in the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, a Fellow of the UMN Institute on the Environment, and recipient of the Community Engaged Scholar Award at the University of Minnesota in 2022. 

Mitch Hunter is the Associate Director of the Forever Green Initiative and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics. 

Margaret Wagner is Manager of the Fertilizer Non-Point Section at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. She received an MS from the University of Minnesota and was a graduate fellow at The Land Institute in 2007.

Related Resources

Cheese, yogurt, butter… dairy is a long-time diet staple and integral to a vast number of food cultures worldwide. In the United States, dairy consumption has been on the rise for decades, while the number of U.S. dairy farms has steadily declined. Today, there are fewer than 30,000 U.S. dairy farms, and each has an opportunity to drive climate solutions within their operation.   

The dairy industry has a long-standing commitment to sustainability. In fact, thanks to improved farming practices the carbon footprint of producing 1 gallon of milk shrank by 19% between 2007 and 2017, requiring 30% less water and 21% less land, according to a study published in the Journal of Animal Science. But there is still more work ahead. While growing crops for cow feed contributes to a dairy farm’s environmental footprint, most of an operation’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is methane from cow burps and methane and nitrous oxide from manure.

With impact, comes opportunity.

The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy has set aggressive environmental stewardship goals—including achieving greenhouse gas neutrality by 2050. To reach these goals, six national dairy organizations came together to form the U.S. Dairy Net Zero Initiative (NZI), an industry-wide collaboration to advance research and technology, on-farm pilots, and new market development. The objective is to make sustainable practices and technologies more accessible and affordable to all U.S. dairy farms. 

Farmers like Theo Scholze in Wisconsin are ready to do their part. “Just about every decision we make, there is a financial side to it,” he says. “But if I can make changes to help the overall global environment, I feel it is my responsibility to do that.”

Scholze is among the first farmers to enroll in the Dairy Feed in Focus program, a collaboration launched by the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, Syngenta and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). The program supports NZI’s environmental objectives by helping to incentivize and implement best practices in feed and forage production and feed efficiency.

Since farmer recruitment began in Michigan and Wisconsin in 2022, TNC has worked with Foremost Farms and  Michigan Milk Producers Association to enroll over 30 farmers and approximately 10,000 acres. These farms represent a total influence of over 42,000 acres and 23,000 dairy cows. Farmer recruitment for 2024 is slated to start in September 2023. The program is helping farmers adopt an array of practices expected to deliver climate, soil, and water quality benefits on dairy farms of all sizes. These practices include:

• Soil health practices like cover crops, reduced/no till, and crop rotation
• Edge of field practices such as harvestable buffers, grassed waterways, and pollinator strips  
• Nutrient and manure management
• Feed management practices such as alternative feed rations and/or feed additives/ingredients
• Grazing management

The minimum time commitment for farmers to implement practices on their farms is three years. Farmers also receive incentive payments for practice implementation. To date, the FiF team has fundraised over $1.5M for farmer incentives in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Idaho. Nestlé USA is funding the incentives in all three states, and Rotary International District 6310 is funding the incentives for several farms in Michigan.

Additional elements of the climate-smart Feed in Focus program include working with the farmer to collect data, and then track and analyze that data for sustainability metrics like reduction of GHG emissions. Program partners also provide tailored technical support for decision making, implementation, monitoring, reporting and verification.

Participating farmers, like Scholze, are pioneering a new phase of dairy farming. They are helping to create scientifically verified examples of the best agronomic and farm management practices that will serve as models for practice implementation on dairy farms of all sizes through the U.S. and beyond.

“Scalability is key to drive meaningful change and impact,” said Liz Hunt, Head of Sustainable and Responsible Business for Syngenta North America. “Our expectation is this project will deliver a blueprint for how to implement similar projects across the country, promoting shared learnings that benefit supply chains across the dairy industry.”

Throughout their broad networks, program partners will share these success stories with U.S. dairy farmers and help accelerate adoption of practices that improve productivity and reduce the industry’s environmental footprint.

But the collaboration between the dairy industry and conservation does not stop with the Feed in Focus program. In 2021 the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, the Institute for Feed Education and Research, and TNC were awarded a $537,440 grant by the U.S Department of Agriculture to explore innovative feed management strategies that can reduce enteric methane emissions in dairy cattle. This project, along with the Feed in Focus program, are examples of how government, businesses and NGOs can work together to advance climate-smart agriculture practices for the benefit of farmers, communities and nature.

“If we all contribute a little bit, we can move in a direction that is positive for the environment and positive for our industry,” says Scholze.

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^{Last edited on August 1, 2023.}

Karen Scanlon is the Executive VP of Environmental Stewardship at Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy.

Alisha Staggs is the North America Dairy Program Director at The Nature Conservancy.

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