Star Tribune
AI could help track farm country’s carbon emissions, U study says
Gases wafting from farms are a major source of climate-warming pollution, but identifying how much comes from a given field has challenged scientists. Now University of Minnesota researchers say artificial intelligence — with a little human help — could solve that problem.
What’s happening in farm country reflects the promise and pitfalls of fighting climate change. While the United Nations has noted agriculture’s potential to collect and store carbon, it contributes 10% of the United States’ greenhouse gases, and 25% across the globe. In Minnesota, agricultural emissions have held steady in recent decades, and are now the second-biggest source of carbon releases, according to a study released last year.
New research from the U suggests machine learning could help scientists, and eventually farmers, do a better job of tracking that carbon. Two authors of the study said the knowledge would help determine which farming changes will work best. It’s crucial knowledge at a time when the federal Inflation Reduction Act earmarked $20 billion for farmers to implement “climate-smart” practices on their land.
“It’s easy to verify, OK, this farmer has planted a cover crop, that farmer has [stopped tilling], but the outcome impact on carbon is totally different,” said Zhenong Jin, a researcher in the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, and one of the authors of the study. The study was produced by the U’s federally funded AI-CLIMATE center, which is dedicated to tracking carbon on farms and in forests.
It seems counterintuitive that agriculture can create planet-warming gases, because plants absorb carbon dioxide as they undergo photosynthesis. But under the right conditions, organic matter can break down in the soil and release that carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Fertilizer can also release nitrous oxide into the air, a lesser known climate pollutant that is 273 times more potent than CO2, according to the EPA.
Doing less to disturb the soil by planting perennial or temporary cover crops and reducing plowing and tilling should help keep carbon in the ground. But there is significant debate among researchers about what methods work best.
The new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, reports that using AI proved significantly more accurate than other models.
Vipin Kumar, a professor of computer science and engineering and also a study author, said researchers sought to cut down on “hallucination,” or risks that AI would invent inaccurate results. They did that by feeding the AI data from an existing model used to estimate the movement of carbon.
The technology researchers used “is not that far from Chat GPT,” Kumar said.
While it’s one challenge to better measure agricultural emissions, another challenge will be recruiting farmers to reduce them.
A bevy of programs in recent years have promised payments, often per-ton of carbon stored, to entice producers to change farming practices. Last August, when visiting the Minnesota State Fair, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack noted income streams already available and others on the horizon — from carbon credits to sustainable aviation fuel — aim to help families stay on farms at a time when 50% of producers draw off-farm income.
Richard Conant, a professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability at Colorado State University, said the methods proposed in the paper could be useful to outline national policy on where to best use money to keep carbon in the soil of farm fields. Conant was not part of the study.
“I love this approach,” said Conant, who has also used AI to track the movement on nitrous oxide.
But he most often relies on soil samples in his own research. He said even an AI model will need more information from on the ground. In general, he said, “We’re operating in kind of a data-poor environment.”
ZUMBRO RIVER VALLEY, MINN. – From his combine on an October afternoon, harvesting dried-out soybeans the color of dust, Martin Larsen points to a hillside where his ancestors from Scandinavia homesteaded.
History might be happening again on the Larsen farm.
Last year, on this plot of land along the Zumbro River, the 43-year-old farmer from Byron grew oats. Not oats for hogs or cows. But oats for humans. He hauled the oats to a miller across the state line into Iowa. A previous year, Larsen even had a contract with Oatly, the trendy Swedish maker of milk alternatives.
Something of an oat renaissance has been occurring down in the fields west of the Mississippi River. During winters, Larsen — through his job with the Olmsted County Soil and Water Conservation District — evangelized to fellow farmers on the humble small grain.
His friends and neighbors were listening. As of this fall, over 60 farmers, covering 6,000 acres across southern Minnesota, have joined Larsen’s informal coalition to grow food-grade oats. They call themselves the “oat mafia.”
Star of breakfast food, children’s books and, increasingly, those nondairy lattes, oats are easier on the environment, requiring less nitrogen than corn, which means a lot in the karst-rich hill country of southeastern Minnesota, where the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has tasked state officials with cleaning up drinking water.
“Nitrates come from this,” said Larsen, driving his gray Gleaner combine on a patch of soybeans beneath a hillock just beyond the suburban sprawl of northwest Rochester on a recent warm Friday afternoon. “I’m not going to beat around the bush anymore. That’s what the data says.”
But as the oat mafia looks to the future, they’re struggling with a basic marketing question: Who will actually buy these oats they’re growing?
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
