REGIONAL- A northeast Minnesota famers cooperative dedicated to growing climate-adaptive seedlings for reforestation and forest preservation has received a $15,000 grant from the Minnesota Farmers Union to support their efforts.
The Farm and Forest Growers Cooperative is a network of small farms and nurseries, including two in the Embarrass/Babbitt area, that works with the Forest Assisted Migration Project (FAMP) at the University of Minnesota-Duluth to develop “climate-smart” tree seedlings that are more adaptive and resilient to climate change that are in turn sold to a network of reforestation programs.
The need for such seedlings has been touted by scientists who project that unrestricted climate change with its increasing annual temperatures could have devastating effects on Minnesota’s boreal forests.
In a 2020 article in the Washington Post, Lee Frelich, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Forest Ecology, said that if the state’s warming trend remains unchecked, the boreal forests could disappear entirely, which would also decimate a third of the state’s native species of trees, flowers, birds, and pollinators. In an extreme scenario, Frelich said, much of Minnesota could turn into prairie land, devastating the timber and tourism industries.
“Minnesota could become the new Kansas,” Frelich told the Post. “We have a perfectly good Kansas now. We don’t need a second one in Minnesota.”
Not all scientists share Frelich’s dire projections, but the general consensus is that continued warming will wreak havoc on the forests, and evidence already exists that rising temperatures have negatively impacted forest regeneration.
David Abazs, executive director of the University of Minnesota Extension Northeast Regional Sustainable Development Partnership and FAMP project lead, sees evidence of the impact every day.
“To put it really personal, I live in Finland, and on my property I’m watching our spruce and fir die, and I’m seeing grasses coming back in their place,” Abazs said. “I’m seeing, you know, 80 to 90 percent of the trees dying.”
Abazs noted that the challenges go beyond just rising temperatures. The effects of past forest management practices, the variability of drought and heavy rains, and the greater presence of pests and disease are enmeshed in the increasing challenges of forest sustainability in a time of climate change.
FAMP is pursuing two major objectives identified by UMD researcher Julie Etterson and the Nature Conservancy’s Meredith Cornett that will help transition northern woodlands into a more sustainable forest, Abazs said. The first is collecting seeds of similar tree species from central and southern Minnesota, trees that are adapted to the type of climate anticipated for northern Minnesota.
“Research is showing that they are more resilient and outgrowing the seed from trees around, say Ely,” Abazs said.
The second objective is growing out those climate-smart tree seedlings.
“We’re looking to plant a diversity of these climate-smart tree seedlings in our forests to be better prepared for the coming years,” Abazs said. “Those climate-smart trees will eventually grow up and be parents themselves. That will bring in those genetics into our forests and provide the seed for the next generation of trees.”
Growing is where the Farm and Forest Growers Cooperative comes in.
“We got together a group of 14 farmers originally, and they started growing these tree seedlings on their farms,” Abazs said. “Through that piloting process the group got more and more formalized, and in March this year they became a cooperative. The Farm and Forest Growers Cooperative is a group of 17 farmers and 13 family nurseries that are all growing climate-smart seedlings. They’re primarily growing the trees that you see out your window, but they’re growing them from seed populations from central and southern Minnesota.”
The $15,000 grant will give the nascent coop the resources to tap the expertise of the Minnesota Cooperative Association and others to develop a business plan and do a market assessment of what reforestation organizations need so that they can provide seedlings at market prices, Abazs said.
Strengthening the coop from a business standpoint is essential to achieving their long-term seedling growth target.
“This year they’ve planted about 90,000, and not all will survive,” Abazs said. “We’re going to be increasing the number of farmers and the number of growers and the amount of seed collecting over the next four or five years. The goal of this group is to get to one million tree seedlings produced each year to try to keep up with the increasing demand for climate-smart trees.”
Ariel Kagan, MFU Director of Climate and Working Lands, said the grant reflects MFU’s long-standing commitment to cooperatives.
“What we’re trying to do with this grant program is really elevate the role of cooperatives as a solution to the climate crisis and think about ways that all of the foundational parts of cooperatives, including democratic control and concern for your community, can really play a role in all of the things we need to address with the changing climate,” Kagan said.
“With the grant we gave them, they’re going to be able to do additional work on their cooperative governance,” Kagan continued. “They’ll be getting set with their board and governance documents and figuring out a feasibility and marketing plan for the seedlings that will help to support the growers that are participating in the cooperative. We’re excited to see what the Farm and Forest Cooperative does with it and to help tell that story to a wider audience.”