University of Minnesota ag visionary, Forever Green Initiative founder Don Wyse dies

Don Wyse, a University of Minnesota crop scientist and visionary of regenerative agriculture who spearheaded what may be the second Green Revolution associated with the state’s land-grant university, has died at 77.

Wyse died on July 2 at his home in Shoreview. He’d sustained injuries after falling, according to the university.

The death of the agronomist and longtime professor in the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, whose career spanned 50 years of students and groundbreaking research into the potential staples for agricultural systems on a warming planet, set off an outpouring of reactions from across Minnesota and the agronomy community.

“His passion for sustainable agriculture was infectious, whether it was helping develop the grass-seed industry or paving the way for ‘third crop’ production in the state,” said Minnesota Department of Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen. “Don left a lasting imprint on agriculture and Minnesota.”

Originally a weed scientist who joined the U in 1974, Wyse co-founded the Forever Green Initiative in 2012. The team of crop scientists are developing a suite of perennial and winter-hardy crops, from Kernza to pennycress, that could by century’s end cover the Upper Midwest — feeding the world, fueling airplanes and protecting soil and water.

“Interestingly, his training was as a herbicide physiologist — a weed scientist,” said Mitch Hunter, associate director of Forever Green. “A brilliant mind, a visionary, [Wyse] saw that we need diversity back on the landscape and more and different crops that can compete with weeds and protect the soil and protect the water.”

Wyse cut a 1960s-era hippie profile ― long-haired, wearing sandals, sometimes prone to bluntness ― that occasionally left him standing out in agricultural circles known more for Carhartt and work boots. But in the 1970s, his research into weed resistance in Roseau and Lake of the Woods counties established an early victory: a booming grass-seed industry along the Canadian border.

“Whether it was someone working with private companies, [or] working with legislators, Don would find himself at the center of it,” said Richard Magnusson, a farmer in Roseau County who remembered Wyse’s early research in the region decades ago.

The early success helped cement a formula he’d follow in the coming years: bringing parties together.

Over the ensuing decades, Wyse built a consensus across the industry, helping new crops find commercial viability and drawing onlookers from university laboratories and corporate boardrooms. In 2012, along with fellow agronomy professor Nick Jordan, he founded Forever Green, which focuses on breeding better strands of perennial and winter-hardy annual crops.

In a 2014 interview with the Star Tribune, Wyse said he wanted to stay at the U until “we have stabilized funding” for Forever Green. According to Jordan, the Legislature has provided Forever Green about $2.5 million annually in recent years.

Rep. Ginny Klevorn, DFL-Plymouth, has known Wyse since her husband served as one of Wyse’s first graduate assistants in the 1970s.

“Don was a very special person,” Klevorn said. “He wouldn’t hesitate to say what you’re saying is not factual. But he also brought people in. He created this network all across the United States.”

A central theme of Wyse’s research was not only developing crops that would be good for the Earth, but could also create markets for farmers who need a profit to survive. It was a perspective the weed-scientist-turned-regenerative-agriculture-pioneer knew from growing up on a dairy farm in Ohio.

During the Vietnam War, Wyse attempted to enlist in the U.S. military, according to Dawn Wyse-Pester, Wyse’s daughter. But the recruitment officer denied his application. Instead, Wyse pursued his studies. Wyse received his doctorate from Michigan State University and took a job at Minnesota.

The Minnesota Crop Improvement Association lobbied for his position to aid struggling grass-seed farmers in northern Minnesota. His breeding program there launched the production of the perennial ryegrass industry. He told the New York Times that it was during this era that he used the phrase “evergreen crops” in a presentation ― an idea that would someday morph into Forever Green.

By planting crops year-round on the cold, often-frozen Minnesota landscape, a farmer could make more profit and keep the topsoil in place: a win-win.

“[Wyse] accomplished that by advancing global food security and environmental sustainability with his expertise in crop systems,” said Brian Buhr, dean of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences at the U. “A true ‘drum major’ for food and environmental justice in the world.”

In recent years, as the Earth warms and environmentalists and farm groups seek to continue to produce food while drawing down greenhouse gas emissions, the contributions of the countercultural weed scientist from the University of Minnesota have been gaining attention.

Earlier this year, Cargill, the global agriculture company based in Minnetonka, announced a $2.5 million investment with Forever Green to develop new crops producing low-carbon fuels and feed.

Wyse’s legacy can also be seen through his children and grandchildren, who have largely followed him into agronomics, as well as his many students. Wyse himself followed in the footsteps of other agronomist giants associated with the U, including alumnus Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, whose authorship of new wheat varieties in the 1940s led to a dramatic boost in yields and decrease in hunger across the globe.

“Borlaug’s revolution was green for a short period of time,” Wyse’s daughter, Dawn, said. “Wyse’s revolution was green 100% of the time, and making it profitable through every month of the year.”