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CoverCress: New cash cover crop coming 2022

Farmers will have a new cash cover crop available for planting after fall harvest of 2022.

Mike DeCamp, COO of CoverCress based in St. Louis tells Brownfield their company has applied traditional breeding and advanced gene editing to the native annual pennycress to improve yield, maturity, and oil and meal quality.  

“It provides a farmer not only the opportunity to have the soil health benefits of a cover crop but also a new opportunity for on farm income. It gives the farmer a chance to have profit three times in two years on the same land.”

He says the company has been working on it for 8 years and will have a small commercial launch this fall followed by a full commercial launch with enough seed for about 50,000 acres in the fall of 2022.

“We will continue to advance the crop, scale up our acres and put ourselves in a spot in the 2023-2025 time frame where we will be able to satisfy market demand for low carbon intensity oil that can go into the production of renewable fuels and then the high protein meal has a marketplace in animal and livestock feed.”

Instead of marketing the crop, DeCamp says farmers fulfill a contract with CoverCress. He says support for their product is reflected throughout the value chain with strategic investors including Bunge, Bayer and the Renewable Energy Group.