By Grace Jacobson / News Director

Experts say fuel made from crops can reduce carbon emissions by more than 60-percent compared to petroleum jet fuel or diesel. To support research into seed-based oil production, Cargill awarded a five-year, $2.5 million grant to the Forever Green Initiative at the University of Minnesota.

Forever Green is an international leader in the development of winter camelina and pennycress, two novel oilseed crops that can produce seed-based oil for low-carbon transportation fuels while also protecting soil, improving water quality and providing new revenue streams for farmers.

Grown in the off-season and with few inputs, these crops produce seed-based oil with a small greenhouse gas footprint.

By integrating them with common Midwest crops, farmers can keep their soil covered with living crop plants year-round—a strategy known as “continuous living cover” agriculture.

A recent report called Putting Down Roots projects that, with widespread adoption in Minn., continuous living cover agriculture could reduce nitrogen loss from farmland by 23% and soil erosion by 35% by 2050.