The Forever Green EECO Implementation Program will support the commercial success and environmental benefits of new high-efficiency, continuous living cover crops and cropping systems in Minnesota. Kernza, winter camelina, winter barley, and hybrid winter rye are just four of over a dozen new perennial and winter annual cropping systems being developed by the University of Minnesota’s Forever Green Initiative. These crops are intended to offer new economic opportunities to growers, new sustainable ingredients to industry, and critical ecosystem services to society.

The program includes financial and in-field technical support for growers, as well as capacity-building resources for partners around the state. Implementation activities will focus on four areas of Minnesota that have vulnerable groundwater—southeast, southwest, northwest, and the Central Sands—which the program calls Economic and Environmental Clusters of Opportunity, or EECOs.

The expanded program is offered in partnership by the University of Minnesota (UMN) Forever Green Initiative and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) with funds from the Clean Water Council. It is a pilot program attempting to develop a model that can be used to support the launch of the many continuous living cover crops and cropping systems being developed by the UMN Forever Green Initiative.

Have you participated in the EECO program in the past?