Author: Francis Smeins

Partnerships for Developing ‘Forever Green’ Agriculture in the Upper Midwest

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 AmericaTM 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!

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

Download project fact sheet
(includes pathways for scaling)

Back to Building Ambition page

Explore our Decision-Makers Guide to Natural Climate Solutions to better understand the science behind these strategies and get tools to implement them.

Collaborative Program Drives Climate Solutions on U.S. Dairy Farms

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.

The farmer is feeding his cows Italian ryegrass, a perennial cover crop that is a dairy climate solution because it helps the cows produce less methane while improving the area's water quality and soil health.

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:

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.

TNC staff and dairy farmer are discussing how to use a cover crop as a dairy climate solution as this particular crop, Italian ryegrass, doesn't make the cows produce as much methane when eaten.

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.

TNC staff and dairy farmer are discussing dairy climate solutions to decrease the farm's climate impact and improve water quality in the surrounding area.

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.

Additional Resources

Download project factsheet for pathways for scaling this climate solution.

See more examples of Americans applying Natural Climate Solutions on their land at our Building Ambition for Action page.

Learn more about Dairy Feed in Focus.

Just Add Water? Restoring Carbon Sinks in Minnesota 

It’s a crisp fall day in northern Minnesota, and our team suits up in mud boots, jackets, and backpacks with greenhouse gas monitoring equipment. We squelch through sphagnum mosses, careful to avoid stepping on rare (and carnivorous) pitcher plants and pausing to taste wild bog cranberries. Sax-Zim bog, a watery landscape that covers more than 300 square miles of bogs, forests, lakes, and farms, is home to peatland research sites as part of a partnership between The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Forest Service, and the University of Minnesota.

Peatlands are a unique type of wetland: waterlogged ecosystems where plant matter builds up without decaying. They cover 2 – 2.3 million hectares (almost six million acres) in Minnesota, more than any other state in the lower 48. Intact peatlands are an incredible carbon sink and store up to 30% of soil carbon worldwide but cover just 3% of the world’s surface. However, in Minnesota, 191,000 hectares have been fully drained and converted to agriculture, roads, mining and other uses. When drained, the peat is exposed to the air and releases stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, converting these landscapes from carbon sinks to carbon sources. Of the remaining peatlands, about 162,000 to 193,000 hectares are impacted by partial drainage from failed forestry or agricultural purposes. Ongoing carbon losses in these landscapes are estimated at a rate of about 38,000 metric tons per year– equivalent to the carbon released by burning over 154 million pounds of coal.  Partially drained peatlands across Minnesota mean that there is a lot of untapped potential for carbon storage—if we can plug the ditches and raise the water table. By restoring ditched peatlands, we can likely bring back the carbon-capturing abilities of these ecosystems and help prevent major carbon emissions in the form of peat fires and rapid decomposition.

current carbon source A ditch draining water from a peatland. Photo by Derek Montgomery. Partially drained peatlands across Minnesota mean that there is a lot of untapped potential for carbon storage—if we can plug the ditches and raise the water table.

Given the critical role that protecting and restoring peatlands plays in the global carbon cycle, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Minnesota is working with partners to develop a strategy to protect and restore peatlands as an important component of an overall climate change mitigation strategy. We are trying to answer the question: how can we best maintain carbon stores in the ground, and avoid their loss to the atmosphere as CO2? 

We make our way to the first research site, a foot-wide PCV pipe dropping down vertically in the peat, where Colin Tucker of the US Forest Service will use a sensor to take carbon dioxide and methane readings. Chris Lenhart, of The Nature Conservancy and the University of Minnesota, measures peat depth—nearly two meters of partially decomposed organic matter lays below us, storing huge amounts of carbon dioxide.  

Kristen Blann, freshwater ecologist and peatland science lead for The Nature Conservancy, is also onsite. She is working to develop a plan for TNC that will use field data and extensive mapping to help determine the best way to go about peatland restoration. Dr. Blann is collecting data to address some fundamental aspects of rewetting peatlands. 

One big unknown is methane. Raising the water table to restore a peatland does help with capturing carbon dioxide, but it also causes a release of methane, an incredibly potent greenhouse gas. We are working to determine the levels of methane released, and are eagerly researching this question to fill in gaps in our knowledge. If the CO2 storage benefits outweigh losses of carbon to the atmosphere to methane, then large-scale peatland restoration turns out to be a winning climate solution. 

Research Max Wegner (left, Michigan Tech) and Colin Tucker (US Forest Service) measure carbon dioxide and methane at Sax Zim Bog. Photo by Derek Montgomery. 

As we crunch the numbers on this year’s carbon dioxide and methane measurements, we’re looking ahead to a future where Minnesota—or anywhere else with peatlands—can leverage these valuable ecosystems to help us limit the worst impacts of climate change. And restored peatland landscapes will provide more than just carbon benefits. Healthy peatlands provide public health and economic benefits for communities, such as improved flood management that safeguards property and agricultural productivity, and better drinking water quality. 

Luckily, we are not in this work alone. Indigenous communities like Red Lake Nation have set an example by maintaining healthy, intact peatlands nearby by resisting pressures to drain and convert these ecosystems. Many Conservancy scientists around the world are also hard at work studying tropical peatlands. With support from the Bezos Earth Fund, TNC is able to accelerate this research and share plans, questions and findings with partners in conservation around the world working on similar research. 

As it turns to afternoon, we get back in our cars and visit another peatland site, this time one where restoration is already well underway. Ecosystem Investment Partners (EIP) has worked here to plug drainage ditches, and reestablish a healthier, pre-ditching ecosystem. We conduct the same carbon dioxide and methane measurements here, which will be invaluable in our analysis of restoration opportunities. 

There are still plenty of unknowns that will need to be addressed, but we are moving forward. As the research continues, it is becoming clear that restored peatlands can have a significant impact in the fight against climate change. Now we hope to gain insight into the question: Which restoration projects can get us the most carbon storage bang for our conservation buck?

The Nature Conservancy’s work in Minnesota has the potential to demonstrate a pathway for selling high-quality, scientifically-proven credits in carbon markets. This innovative financing would allow us to dramatically scale up peatland restoration, increasing the amount of carbon stored on these lands. As we build on existing science, there is a great need for state and federal agencies, private funders, and others, to prioritize this work as well.

Healthy peatland A young tamarack tree in the bog. Photo by Derek Montgomery.

Back in the bog, we’re wrapping up for the day. Today’s chilly temperatures mark the start of northern Minnesota’s transition to fall, when bog tamaracks will turn golden and other fall colors will burst onto the scene, before the landscape freezes over until spring. Our team, too, is transitioning toward winter, when we will be hard at work planning for the upcoming field season, finishing up a mapping analysis of Minnesota peatlands, and continuing to build partnerships. We’re gearing up to put the science to work, and to work towards re-wetting some of Minnesota’s peatlands to keep them as landscapes of climate mitigation.

View project fact sheet

Two Midwest Farmers Grow Climate Solutions On Working Lands

Farmers can sequester more carbon, increase productivity

The agriculture community is on the front lines of one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time: climate change. Year after year, farmers endure chronic droughts, flooding, record high temperatures, frequent storm events and significant economic losses. These impacts make it harder for producers to support their families and, in turn, provide food for a growing global population. 

Yet farmers are drawing on their rich heritage and passion for stewardship to navigate a changing climate while leaving a legacy to the next generation, as illustrated in The Nature Conservancy’s three-part video series featuring two Midwest farming families.

Food production is the most basic and essential way people interact with nature, so it’s no surprise that the agriculture industry is poised to play a major role in combating a climate change. Farmers have enormous opportunities to help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while ensuring the long-term resilience and profitability of their operations. 

In the three videos below, meet Elyssa McFarland and Fred Yoder, two farmers embracing regenerative practices to build soil health, reduce GHG emissions and leave a lasting legacy. By trying new techniques and investing in their land, they’re discovering the potential of ag lands assome of Earth’s largest natural reservoirs of carbon.

Soil Legacy: Farming for a Stable Climate

The soil health practices farmers use today can impact the resiliency and  productivity of their land for generations to come. What’s your soil legacy?

The Back Forty

Conservation farming practices don’t come in a one-size-fits-all package. The opportunity is finding out which practices work best on individual farms by testing new and different techniques—even some that might make you uncomfortable. 

Leaving Things Better

Family farms make up 98% of all U.S. operations. Learn why these farmers are hopeful each new generation will leave the land in better condition than when they received it.

When farmers use conservation practices (e.g., cover crops, no-till and crop rotation), they retain existing carbon sinks and draw more carbon out of the atmosphere and into the soil. Increased soil carbon sequestration helps restore degraded soils, improves holding capacity for water and nutrients that plants need to grow, and increases productivity.

This article was originally published on Farm Journal.

For more information about how agriculture holds the key to addressing climate change, visit https://nature.org/soil or USN4C’s Agricultural Lands Natural Climate Solutions Pathways.

The Seed Collector: An interview with seed harvest and restoration technician Keith Bennett, who is helping restore Missouri's native tallgrass prairie.

Keith Bennett, seed harvest and restoration technician for TNC’s Dunn Ranch Pawnee Prairie, collects seeds at the prairie preserve in Hatfield, Missouri, U.S.
RESTORING A PRAIRIE: For 15 years, Keith Bennett has worked not far from where he grew up, collecting seeds from native plants to restore tallgrass prairie at TNC’s Dunn Ranch Prairie Preserve in Missouri.  
© Dan Videtich/Courtesy TNC

What is a typical day for you?

Mother Nature determines everything: what grows, what produces seed. You have to first go out and find big populations of native plants. Road banks, remnant prairies, old cemeteries—that’s where I look. And when I see plants blooming, I find out what they are and then I flag it. 

What makes Dunn Ranch Prairie an important place to protect?

Prairie plants are deep-rooted plants. They store carbon in their roots, which can be more than 15 feet deep. The prairie is like a huge sponge. When it rains, [that sponge] soaks up water and then slowly lets it back out of the hillsides into the streams. In our streams, we have Topeka shiner minnows [an endangered species], and they have to have very clean water. The prairie helps the water, the soil health, the wildlife, the pollinators. There’s so much that it does. At Dunn Ranch, there’s more than 1,000 acres of native prairie that have never been plowed. It was majorly overgrazed, so it needed a lot of restoration and rest, but that was the start. There’s less than 4% of the tallgrass prairie left in the United States so having such a big, unplowed portion here was a rare thing to find.

You grew up not far from Dunn Ranch. What got you interested in conservation and ecology?

I’ve lived here in Harrison County my whole life. And I’ve always loved nature. Everything about it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a bug, a plant, an animal. As a little kid, my dad would set me outside and say, “Look at him, he’s just listening to everything.” But I never knew anything about native plants until I started at The Nature Conservancy and started this role of seed collecting and prairie restoration.

To me, [a native plant] was a weed. And that’s how most people think of them—as weeds. But they’re really interesting if you take the time to stop, look, listen, smell. It’s amazing what’s out there. I’ve learned a lot by doing this. I never would have thought to go to an old cemetery to look for native plants. But most old cemeteries have an area that’s never been row-cropped or grazed or used to this day. And that is remnant prairie. 

So you’re gathering seeds not just from Dunn Ranch sites but from the surrounding area.

Within 100 miles is considered native. That’s the ecotype. 

Keith Bennett, seed harvest and restoration technician for TNC’s Dunn Ranch Pawnee Prairie, collects seeds at the prairie preserve in Hatfield, Missouri, U.S.
GATHERING SEEDS Keith Bennett, seed harvest and restoration technician at Dunn Ranch Prairie gathers native plant seeds. © Dan Videtich/Courtesy TNC

How do you keep all that knowledge stored? Is it all in your head? Or do you have maps or GIS systems that actually plot where large populations of important plants are?

I kept it in my head for years. But now we’ve made a map with GPS locations so if somebody needed to find a large population of a plant, they would have locations of where to go look for it. And then I have a list of when a plant blooms and when I start hand-collecting the seed. For instance, this year is a late spring. We’ve had a lot of cool weather. Field cat’s-foot is one that’s already come and gone. Normally, I collect Field cat’s-foot right around May 1. This year I collected it around May 15. So I can figure the rest of the plants throughout the year are going to be close to a week to 10 days later than normal. 

Why is it beneficial to harvest native seed by hand?

That’s the only way you can do it. Field cat’s-foot only gets 5 or 6 inches tall. The way I harvest it is I use a push lawn mower with a bagger on it. I set it as high as it’ll go, and I just mow over it, and the seed is so light and fluffy it just goes up in the bag. I’ve come up with several things over the years to make the harvest as simple as I can, because when you’re out there, and it’s 100 degrees, and you’ve got 75% humidity, and you’re on your hands and knees, and you’re looking for a seed that’s itty-bitty, it’s pretty tough going. 

I read that you collect as much as 800 pounds of seed in a season.

By hand, yes. And then we also mechanically harvest. I have a combine. It’s an R-52 Gleaner combine, and it’s got a 22-foot rice stripper head on it. It knocks the seed off the plants; it don’t cut ’em. I go out in the fall when things are starting to dry a little bit, or when I find really big concentrations of seed. I might combine anywhere from 30 to 40 species all at one time. 

Bennett holds a dried flower seed pod. 
SEED Bennett holds a dried flower seed pod. 
© Dan Videtich/Courtesy TNC
Picture of tall grass prairie. Dunn Ranch contains some of the last remaining tallgrass prairie in the U.S. that hasn't been plowed under. 
PRAIRIE RESTORATION Dunn Ranch contains some of the last remaining tallgrass prairie in the U.S. that hasn’t been plowed under. 
© Dan Videtich/Courtesy TNC

In addition to grazing Dunn Ranch with a bison herd, you use prescribed burns to maintain the prairie. Can you explain a little bit how fire benefits prairie plants?

There are species of plants that you do not see unless you burn. Prairie blazing star, for instance. If you go several years without burning, you can look out, and you’d think there is no prairie blazing star out there. And then you can burn that area, and there will be so much blazing star that it’s just a purple sea. It’s beautiful. 

What are some of the most interesting plants you’ve encountered in your work?

Bird’s-foot violet has a sticky, sugary substance on the seed. When the seed explodes, the ants take that seed into the ground to lick the sugar off of it and plant the seed. New Jersey tea—if you want New Jersey tea to grow you have to cook it to 180 degrees Fahrenheit before you seed it. There’s so many medicinal plants. Purple coneflower—American Indians used it for toothaches. But my favorite is downy blue gentian because of the color of it. And the rarity.

What is the hardest part of your job?

The hardest part is dealing with Mother Nature. I used to get awfully upset when a native seed would be ready to pick, and we would have one windy day, or one thunderstorm, and that seed was gone. I mean, you just have a [tiny] window, and Mother Nature can take it away. When it comes harvest time, the pressure is on. You gotta get out there and get it when the window is there. 

Every month a prairie is like a different place. What is it like to have a job where you’re so connected to those cycles and that seasonality?

It’s really great. I had a volunteer who would come up from Kansas City, which is about 100 miles south of here, every other Tuesday throughout the whole year to help hand-collect seed. And she said it was different every time. There are different plants in bloom, there are different colors. She really noticed a big difference in just a two-week time period. 

Bennet looking over a field.

“Native plants are really interesting if you take the time to stop, look, listen, smell. It’s amazing what’s out there.”

KEITH BENNETT

DUNN RANCH Keith Bennett at work at Dunn Ranch Prairie Preserve © Dan Videtich/Courtesy TNC

This article was originally published by The Nature Conservancy in the Fall 2022 issue of Nature Conservancy magazine.

Other stories related to seed collection in the United States:

Gisel Garza: Seed Hunter
It Starts with a Seed: Producing High Quality Native Seed for Restoration in the Willamette Valley
Seeing the Forest for the Seedlings: Challenges and Opportunities in the Effort to Reforest America

Updated Tool Can Help US Communities Include Forests and Trees in GHG Inventories

Many communities in the U.S. are developing Climate Action Plans (CAPs) to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and achieve carbon neutrality. While many CAPs focus on the energy, transportation and waste sectors, most do not consider the role forests and trees play in the fight against climate change. This is because planners have lacked the data and clear guidance needed to include them in GHG inventories, which CAPs are based.

To address this gap, experts from WRI, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI USA) and the Woodwell Climate Research Center published guidance for ICLEI USA’s U.S. Community Protocol as well as the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories.

These frameworks outline how to estimate emissions caused by forest and tree cover loss within communities, as well as carbon absorbed by forests and trees that a community maintains and plants.

The accompanying Land Emissions and Removals Navigator (LEARN) tool, developed in collaboration with web developer Blue Raster, makes it even easier for communities to implement this guidance and integrate estimates into their GHG inventories.

Screenshot of the LEARN tool showing the different map layers, including land cover change, US municipalities, and land cover type.
Screenshot of the LEARN tool

What is LEARN?

LEARN is a free online calculation tool that combines methods outlined in the U.S. Community Protocol with the data necessary to perform the calculations. In just a few clicks, users can derive locally tailored estimates of the annual GHG impacts associated with changes to forests and tree cover in their community over time.

After specifying an area and years to analyze, LEARN does the rest by performing automated, spatially explicit analyses of data from the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey, including:

  • Land cover change
  • Type and age structure of a communitys forest lands
  • Timing and location of forest disturbances like fire, harvest and insect outbreaks
  • Loss and gain of tree canopy cover in urban and other non-forested lands

(Read more about the history and development of the LEARN tool.)

What’s new with LEARN in 2022?

In early 2022, the LEARN project team collaborated with the Chesapeake Conservancy to implement a suite of updates to LEARN. Beyond land cover change and forest disturbance data updated through the year 2019, LEARN now includes high resolution (1 meter) tree canopy change maps for the Chesapeake Bay watershed derived from the Chesapeake Bay program 1 meter land cover/land use data. These maps span across six eastern states and the District of Columbia and support communities of more than 18 million people.

Map of U.S. highlighting six states in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, where the LEARN tool can make calculations with high resolution (1 meter) tree canopy change maps.
LEARN now includes high resolution (1 meter) tree canopy change maps for the Chesapeake Bay program, spanning across six states and supporting communities of over 18 million people.

Previously, the LEARN tool performed analysis only on the NLCD Tree Canopy product. While this dataset provides national coverage, it fails to accurately capture the true extent and change of trees in many highly urbanized communities due to its relatively coarse (30 meter) spatial resolution. Now, counties and cities along the eastern seaboard can view the new high-resolution tree canopy data in 900 -times more detail than before and analyze tree canopy change down to the scale of individual land parcels. This update not only demonstrates the benefits of significantly enhanced analysis capabilities, it reinforces calls to extend this dataset from regional to national coverage.

In July 2022, the project team launched a second training cohort to guide 20 communities in implementing the U.S. Community Protocol methods and using the LEARN tool. This followed a first successful Forests & Trees Carbon Accounting Cohort Training Session in 2021. Participants in the second cohort included municipal governments, tribes and states both within the Chesapeake watershed and across the country.

Next Steps for Community GHG Inventories: Scaling and Impact

The successful launch of the U.S. Community Protocol and LEARN tool spurred the creation of a new internationally applicable protocol for estimating GHG impacts of forests and trees at the local scale. The Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories Supplemental Guidance for Forests and Trees launched in July 2022. The protocol has already been successfully piloted in Jakarta, Mumbai, Salvador and Mexico City, and many more cities and communities across the world plan to incorporate the methods into their emissions inventories. ICLEI USA is also expanding the U.S. Community Protocol with a steering committee to spearhead a more accessible and holistic approach for local and regional governments to view and manage emissions.

Forests and trees play a critical role in carbon sequestration while providing other benefits to communities, including improving air quality, regulating hydrological processes, reducing energy costs and promoting well-being. Accurate monitoring of these resources over time may enable communities to make better land management decisions that benefit both climate and people simultaneously.

WRI and ICLEI USA are continuing to seek input from stakeholders across the U.S. and around the world on how these methods may best be scaled across geographies, governments and technical capacities.

For questions or to learn more, reach out to erin.glen@wri.org or tom.herrod@iclei.org.

This article was originally published by the World Resources Institute.

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