The Minnesota Star Tribune reported last fall that the first sustainable aviation fuel—made from a Minnesota-grown crop called winter camelina—powered a Delta Air Lines flight from the Twin Cities to New York City. It marked the beginning of a plan by Minnesota SAF Hub, a coalition including Bank of America, Delta, Ecolab, and Xcel Energy, to eventually convert all Delta flights from MSP to bio-based jet fuels to reduce greenhouse gases.

You may think the sole star of the show here is sustainable aviation fuel. But, as a long-ago radio personality used to say, now for the rest of the story.

By tapping into the market for plant-based aviation fuel, U of M researchers at the Forever Green Initiative are commercializing two oil-producing plants—winter camelina and domesticated pennycress—that can give farmers a payday for planting winter cover crops that hold soil, take up excess nutrients, and help protect the quality of Minnesota’s streams and groundwater.

Mitch Hunter, associate director of the University’s Forever Green Initiative, says “What we’re trying to do is develop crops that make farmers money, and in the process, provide all those environmental benefits that we’ve been trying to get to for so long with very little success.”

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) also recently awarded the U of M $10 million for the Oilseed Crops to Sustain the Environment and Meet Energy Demand (OILSEED) project. OILSEED was selected as one of six projects working to “advance the production of low carbon intensity, purpose-grown energy crops critical to accelerating a clean energy bioeconomy.”

From cover crops to jet fuel

This story really begins with “the big brown spot”—the vast agriculture region of the upper Midwest that stands barren from October through April, with nothing growing to protect the soil. “You can see the brown of this uncovered landscape from space,” says Hunter.

That bare earth is prone to wind and water erosion. Runoff of nutrients, especially nitrogen, into streams and groundwater fertilizes lakes, pollutes sources of drinking water, and contributes to the “dead zone” at the end of the Mississippi River. Says Hunter, “When soil has nothing living on it, rain falls, filters through the soil, and draws those nutrients directly into our waterways. You have to have a plant living there to take up the nitrogen and the phosphorus.”

The solution—plant something, anything, to hold soil and take up excess nutrients until the next cash crop is planted. A recent report by Forever Green partners, including consultants Ecotone Analytics and Friends of the Mississippi River, estimated that widespread use of cover crops could reduce nitrogen loss from farmland by 23 percent and soil erosion by 35 percent by 2050.

But folks have promoted cover crops for a long time. “They get a lot of buzz, and they’re adopted in Minnesota on 2 or 3 percent of the total cropland, despite years and years and years of education and investment and incentives,” says Hunter. “So that model isn’t working.”

The problem? Cover crops take both time and money.

So about 30 years ago, the late Don Wyse, Forever Green cofounder and codirector, began working with farmers to grow a perennial rye grass that not only anchors soil, but can be sold for commercial grass seed. Says Hunter, “All of a sudden, you transformed the cropping systems in that region to have perennial cover for a large part of the rotation, and it was all because they developed a crop that actually made farmers money.”

Wyse and his colleagues went prospecting for other potentially profitable cover crops. Of 15 or so, two are pertinent to our story today. The first is winter camelina, an old crop from Europe related to cabbage, kale, broccoli, and canola. Like canola, it produces tiny seeds with an oil content as high as 35 percent. The other is pennycress, a new crop bred from a ubiquitous weed. Like camelina, it is rich in oil, exceptionally winter hardy, and even quicker to grow and mature.

Forever Green’s plan is to target the more than 2 million acres in Minnesota used to raise spring wheat, corn silage, alfalfa, and small grains—crops that are harvested in early fall. Then farmers can plant winter camelina or pennycress, let it grow through late fall, winter, and early spring, and harvest the oil seed crop in late spring before planting the next cash grain crop.

But how to market camelina or pennycress oil seeds to get a good price? Selling them for food-grade oil means competing with a lot of well-established oils like canola and sunflower. Sustainable diesel fuel is a possibility, but ground transportation seems to be moving toward electrification.

Enter sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a use that’s growing exponentially. Aviation accounts for about 2 percent of global emission of the carbon dioxide that drives climate change, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Like other fields of transportation, aviation seeks to reduce its fossil fuel use.

Trains, trucks, and automobiles have been able to replace internal combustion engines with electric motors and massive banks of batteries. Unfortunately, in the air, every ounce counts—so aviation has looked to fuels from renewable biological sources such as used cooking fat and dedicated energy crops.

SAF makes up only about 0.1 percent of total jet fuel burned today, but the previous federal administration had set a goal of meeting all U.S. aviation fuel needs with sustainable products by 2050. State and federal programs and tax credits were planned to encourage the conversion to SAF, although questions now exist about the new administration’s support of those.

“We are hopeful that the incoming administration will continue to support novel sources of homegrown energy that benefit farmers, rural economic development, and the environment,” says Hunter. He adds that state incentives and private support will continue to further development of sustainable fuels and enviornmentally beneficial farming practices.

“That market is extremely hungry for oil,” says Hunter. “If we had a big supply right now, we could sell it.”

Finding partners

Forever Green’s challenge now is to commercialize camelina and pennycress as the raw material for sustainable aviation jet fuel.

“Forever Green is really nationally unique in how it balances the research and development, its commercialization program, and what we call the Forever Green Partnership,” says Colin Cureton (M.S. ’14, M.P.P. ’14), director of commercialization, adoption, and scaling. The partnership is a host of organizations focused on keeping farmland in cover, including Friends of the Mississippi, Minnesota Environmental Partnership, Land Stewardship Project, and Minnesota Farmers Union, which have laid the groundwork for green ag projects at the legislature and with the public.

Forever Green has also forged partnerships with influential partners in private industry. One is the ag giant Cargill, which has already awarded $2.5 million to support research into developing varieties of camelina and pennycress that mature earlier and produce greater yields.

Cargill joined Forever Green in recruiting a small group of farmers in Minnesota and North Dakota in a pilot project to grow winter camelina as a cover crop. One of them is Nick Seitzer, who raises corn, soybeans and other crops near St. Peter, Minnesota. In fall 2023 he planted 20 acres of winter camelina. In the spring he planted soybeans amid the camelina plants.

The camelina—besides taking up runoff and holding soil—also choked out weeds, eliminating the need for a pass with herbicide. Seitzer harvested the camelina in late spring when the soybeans were still low to the ground. Importantly, the soybean harvest that followed produced a normal yield.

Farmers like Seitzer who participate in Cargill’s pilot program are eligible for $20–$50 per acre through a Forever Green program called Environmental and Economic Clusters of Opportunity (EECO), which is funded by the Clean Water Council with support from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

Seitzer said he could imagine working winter camelina into his farming, even without the financial support. “It has the benefits of the cover crop, but at the same time, it has the financial benefit to our farm as a cash crop,” he says. “It’s a win-win situation.”

Another Forever Green partnership is with MBOLD, a coalition of major food and farm companies, including General Mills, Compeer Financial, Target, and Schwan’s Company. A recent MBOLD report estimated a winter camelina cover crop could boost farm profits by $40 per acre.

Most importantly, Forever Green’s partnership with the Minnesota SAF Hub built a figurative pipeline from farm field to runway: Local farmers grew the winter camelina. Cargill processed the seed at its plant in West Fargo and shipped about 25,000 gallons of oil by rail to Montana for blending into SAF. The fuel traveled back to the Twin Cities, where it was pumped into the Delta jet that flew to New York.

Cureton says Forever Green is plotting a “path to the first million acres” planted in winter camelina and pennycress. “If we can get that first million acres, a lot of investments are going to be flowing—farmer engagement, commodity markets. If we can do that by 2030, that would be fast. Success is if we drive from here to Fargo and it’s green all the way—in April."

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