(bright music) - Who wants to catch fish?

- [Kids] Me!

- [Bret] On today's "Prairie Sportsman," we visit with Carl Erickson and Ray Ruiz as they introduce ice fishing to kids.

- It's just really an honor to be in a position to serve these kids.

- [Bret] Then, researchers at the new Bioindustrial Innovation Center in Waseca work on another use for hemp.

- [Alan] Looking at new fibers, new opportunities to support Minnesota agriculture.

- Welcome to "Prairie Sportsman."

I'm Bret Amundson.

We got a great show for you this week, and it starts right now.

(serene music) (bright music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Sportsman" is provided by: The Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, as recommended by the Legislative Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources.

And by Mark and Margaret Yeakel Jolene, on behalf of Shalom Hill Farm, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windham, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

(inspirational music) - In this part of the world, it gets cold in the wintertime.

Minnesotans have always adapted, and they're always looking for new ways to introduce the next generation to cold weather outdoor recreation.

Today we're gonna meet a group of people who've made it their mission this winter to introduce 10,000 kids to ice fishing.

(inspirational music continues) - Hi, guys.

Hi, 5th grade.

Are you excited?

- Yeah.

- Who wants to catch fish?

- [Kids] Me!

- I like it.

- What we have going on today is we're teaming up with a combination of community partners, and it's a long list.

You know, it's a heavy lift.

But one of the main principal person or the person in charge would be Carl Erickson.

And he had this vision 10 years ago, and it's come to fruition.

- [Bret] That vision is to get 10,000 kids ice fishing by partnering with communities and schools across the Twin Cities.

Today, two elementary schools from Woodbury are spending their Thursday on the ice for a field trip.

- One of the things we try to do is give these kids some different experiences.

And over half of my kids have never even walked on ice.

And to think about fishing on it was just exciting.

- [Bret] Awesome!

Way to go.

- They didn't realize a lot of the things that go into ice fishing, just some some of the equipment, the electronics, the size of the rods I think was a surprise too.

Why they use short rods in those tight spaces?

I think they're so used to, a lot of them have fished before but never in the winter.

They were excited when they rode up in that bus.

- You know, kids are having fun.

They're asking, they're very inquisitive, very curious about, you know, how deep are we, what type of fish are on this lake?

Just really, really awesome questions.

And it's just really, really an honor to be in a position to serve these kids, educate 'em.

(kids chattering) - So to get 10,000 kids out on the ice, there's a lot of moving parts and there's a lot of people involved.

And, you know, Carl came up with this idea and Ray came in to help him out.

But I didn't realize that there were a lot of other partners from the community making this all possible.

- Oh, man, there's so many things that need to go right today.

Number one, in the state of Minnesota, we need the weather for it.

And this year, it's worked out where we have plenty of ice.

Then, where do we find schools and teachers and people?

And well, if we have educators that want to go and do this experience, okay, great.

So now we've got a population of students coming ready to learn, and then we gotta find out other people with the gear and other people that can help.

And over the years, I've collected enough houses that I got eight hubs out here.

And then, you know, obviously, Basstech can bring a couple.

And then Art and Outdoor Group, they bring as many as they got.

And then the police this year, they got their own set of houses.

- Two years ago, we got hooked up with Carl through an officer on the police department, and he wanted to figure out how to collaborate and get some kids out ice fishing.

Our Police Activities League already had a bunch of the fishing equipment and stuff 'cause we had already been doing this stuff.

So we decided to do a partnership.

And then we found out there was a grant through a Capitol Watershed Project.

So this winter, we are bringing 2,000 kids out to Como Lake and getting them ice fishing.

- We have almost 20 fish houses out here today, and that makes this way possible.

And then with the Police Activities League helping and Elvis Enterprise interns helping and Basstech helping, and, you know, Tickets for Kids is actually connected the ice fishing program to several schools this winter.

- Tickets for Kids Charities is a non-profit organization based in Pittsburgh but operating nationally that provides opportunities to children from low income or at risk backgrounds to experience the cultural, sporting and outdoors events of their neighborhoods and cities.

- Urban Ice Anglers connected with Tickets for Kids.

We are connecting them to several different schools.

That's how our program works.

We have about 450 different social service agencies throughout Minnesota that we connect kids to sporting events, theaters, museums, outdoor activities.

We're able to match about 300 to 500 kids to ice fishing experiences.

The vast majority of which have never been before.

Which as a Minnesota kid, this is really something every Minnesota kid should get the opportunity to do.

- The more people, the more help, the bigger the outcome.

(bright music) - Well, things are really heating up out here.

Even though it's cold, there's screaming going on in that house and then that house and then that house.

There's kids catching fish all over the place.

You wanna touch it?

- Can I touch it?

Can I touch?

- Just kidding.

(group laughing) - My dad just- - I'm scared.

- I won't do it, I promise.

- So some of these kids are from Royal Oaks Elementary School in Woodbury, and most of 'em have never ice fished before.

So, I wanted to know just what kind of reaction these kids had when they learned that they're gonna go out and walk on a frozen lake.

- So I have a young lady who really didn't understand the concept of ice fishing and how we're gonna get a fish out of the water.

Once I told her about there's gonna be holes in the ice, she was really blown away of the fact that there's gonna be holes.

And then I explained that we're gonna use giant drills to make those holes, and she was just blown away.

So we watched a little bit of a video and learned a little bit about ice fishing, and she just got done putting a northern back into the water.

So, very awesome.

- Absolutely, I'm thankful when someone puts on an event like this.

I've been teaching 26 years.

And I talked to my wife, I was talking to people in the community saying, "We're taking our kids ice fishing."

And they're like, "What?"

I mean, everybody was like floored by it.

Like, "How are you gonna do that with three classrooms of kids?"

And I'm like, "We heard about Carl being a well organized machine."

And witness today this from the second we drove up, where were ready to go, the kids were in the tents within five minutes of being on the ice.

So knowing we were gonna do this today, and it was something we've never done before, was just a thrill.

I mean, I love to do it on my own.

And the fact that knowing these kids have never done it before, it's like, (gasps) you know?

What a big deal to get 100 kids in 5th grade trying something new.

- Number one, I want them to understand the safety, you know?

At the shoreline and on the buses, we've talked pretty extensively about like, never ever run onto the frozen lake.

The outcome that I wanna see is that it creates less tragedies in the future around thin ice and around cold weather and things like that.

But then also to, you know, showcase that, hey, in this state when we have a great cold long winter, that there's ways to get out and enjoy it.

A lot of us hunker down, but when we bring all the gear and we get the heaters going and everyone's in these fish houses staying comfortable, when you're comfortable, you have a good first experience.

And then maybe some of these kids come back next year or they, you know, get into some other programming in high school or middle school and they wanna do more of this.

You know, it's gonna create a bigger interest in our Minnesota natural resources.

And what we have here on Como Lake and all the other lakes is opportunity.

- Bye!

(kids chattering) - [Kid] Let's go fishing!

- These kids could be the next Bassmaster Classic champ.

You never know.

Next manufacturer of line.

Next engineer of something fishing.

You just never know.

- I've been into probably half a dozen tents, and every single one's got a smile on their face, and over half those tents caught a fish, so... - Some of 'em will take away, "I can do it."

And that's really important for me.

The I can do it.

- I think these kids will absolutely come back and wanna do this again, including with the chaperones too.

It's just been a great day.

- Everybody have fun today?

- [Kids] Yeah!

- [Bret] You guys wanna come next year?

- [Kids] Yeah.

- What a great way to introduce kids to the outdoors.

And if you have an opportunity to be a part of it, whether you're at a school or a parent or if you just have the chance to take a kid outside, bring 'em ice fishing.

Dress warm and bring snacks.

(bright music) - [Harold] I think the real opportunity is in the bio-construction market.

So you are having basically a modular home that's built from hemp.

- [Alan] So when we help companies develop or prototype their next product, we have a wide range to do the testing on.

- [Narrator] Hemp is making a comeback in America.

While the fiber crop was widely grown here in the 1800s, its production declined after World War II with the advent of synthetics.

Then in 1970, the US government banned production of all cannabis species.

However, unlike its cousin marijuana, hemp is not a narcotic.

And in 2018, the US Farm Bill declared it a legal crop.

Today, with increasing concerns about plastics in our environment, natural hemp products are regaining their popularity.

They're being tested in a range of new products.

From building materials to erosion control mats for road construction.

(pensive music) AURI is a nonprofit research institute created to add value to Minnesota agriculture.

One of AURI's regional laboratories, the Bioindustrial Innovation Center in Waseca, is investigating hemp.

- In Minnesota, we are seeing a lot of hemp production really expand in the central part of the state.

It provides another opportunity for farmers.

AURI began working with hemp about five, six years ago.

And when we started to see that hemp explosion going on in Minnesota, one of the things we did to address that is how can we assist these growers in adding value and finding markets for the new hemp product.

Our focus was on the hemp fiber.

And we also have the capabilities to extract oil from the hemp seed.

But really, the initial work started with the fiber.

- [Narrator] AURI received a grant from the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund to develop hemp threads that could be used to make erosion control mats for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

- The initiative or the LCCMR-funded efforts, one of their main focuses right now, and it has been, is how do you keep plastics out in the environment?

As you drive down the road and you see new construction going on, you will see erosion control mats rolled out along the side or you'll see erosion barriers to stop water runoff going into other sections.

Normally, these erosion control mats had a very fine filament of plastic that holds the straw together, that holds the wood mat together.

Well, what would happen is these products would degrade and do their job and the grass would go through it, you still had that plastic in the environment.

So now everything that they are doing is all burlap based.

They're not using any threads that are plastic.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation, they're very open to looking at new fibers, new opportunities to support Minnesota agriculture.

And that is one of the reasons we wanted to investigate, can we make a good thread out of hemp fiber?

One of the first things we did was to purchase a decorticator from Canada.

(machine whirring) What a decorticator does, it crimps that hemp stalk to break that outside shell off of it.

And then with a bunch of fingers that rapidly move, it liberates or separates what we call the bast.

It separates the bast from the hurd.

So that is the woody outside fraction that almost looks like little wood shaving.

Then you take that bast, the inner lining of the fiber, these fibers will get tore out and broken down into very fine strands.

And what the result is, here is your hemp fast.

And like you can see, it looks a lot like wool.

It's very durable, and that's what hemp is known for.

'Cause if you take a small fragment of it, twist it, this stuff will not pull apart.

And a lot of people will compare it to wool, and they'll say, "What is the difference?

Why don't you just use wool?"

And wool is a excellent fiber.

Cool in the summer, warm in the winter.

But the one thing that hemp offers different than wool is the sheer quantity of it.

Once we start growing hemp on various acres here in Minnesota, the tonnage is enormous.

We had three manufacturers manufacture an erosion control mat.

And what's interesting, they all look different.

Some are thicker, some are thinner.

But ideally you want the hemp hurd, the hemp fibers thin enough so that grass can grow through it.

The other product is using the hemp hurds, that woody fraction, in a hydroseeding mulch.

When they move soil, build a new ditch, or they have a slope that's highly erodable, susceptible to erosion, you know, they'll come along.

And in a water slurry along with seed, they'll blow this fiber and seed onto the soil.

What you want is a structure that sticks into the soil.

So when you have a rain event, it'll hold it.

MnDOT's conducting all the infield trials.

The reason they're doing all this testing of hemp fiber is so it is included in their book of standards.

MnDOT puts out a book of standards that if you're a contractor providing materials to MnDOT for any of their projects, it has to meet certain standards.

So whether it's erosion control, whether it's netting, whether it's a compost, it has to meet their standards.

And what we're doing, the collaboration between the two of us, is making sure hemp can fit into some of those situations.

And what that does, it grows the market.

It grows the need for hemp fiber.

We had asked MnDOT of the quantity of erosion control products that they utilize.

What is that compared to the rest of the state?

And it actually surprised me.

They utilize 10 to maybe 20% of erosion control products that are used in the total state.

So that means 90% to 80% of private or commercial contractors are using a lot more product than what MnDOT does.

If MnDOT says, "No more plastic netting, we're going to burlap or we're going to a hemp thread, or we're going to sisal," the industry will follow.

- [Narrator] While currently Minnesota has fewer than 3000 hemp acres grown for food and fiber, erosion control materials could demand up to 20,000 acres, and there may be even more promising markets.

- I think the real opportunity is in the bio-construction market.

When we get our plants perfected, we're gonna see more bio-based insulation, we're gonna see more bio-based hemp construction panels.

So you're having basically a modular home, if you will, that's built from hemp.

There are many other things out there.

You have flooring that's being developed from hemp, two times harder than oak.

There's a wood preservative made from hemp to make wood last longer, which is very good.

And a whole host of other things that relates to plastics where automobile manufacturers can use this to replace synthetic petroleum plastic.

Farmers are cautious, and they should be.

They want to know particularly that there's a market there after they raise the crop.

The bottom line is, if hemp is going to be successful, it has to compete with corn and soybeans for net returns.

So, when growers look at this, that's the first thing they're gonna do.

They're gonna say, "Can I make as much income off of hemp as I can off of corn and soybeans?"

And if you're close, then you have a eureka moment and you're gonna have this crop propagated in Minnesota.

As we look at where we are in relationship to the rest of the world with this crop, I think we're behind a bit.

Europe is ahead of us.

They are well on their way to producing some very good bio-construction materials.

The plastic side of it is more mature there.

Once we get our things figured out here, we just got this massive property that exists in the USA where this crop could really take off and be part of so many ecosystems in the US 'cause it can grow in a lot of different areas.

It'll do well in many parts of the state of Minnesota.

So as a rotational crop, you're able to break up the rotation between corn and soybeans and introduce another crop that's really good in the entire rotation for the soil, for plant pests, even for weed control.

If we get it produced in volume, we'll have a very dynamic environment where we might look back and say, "Well, there's a lot of stuff that's being grown out here in the fields."

It's not just for food, it's for clothing perhaps, it's for your plastics, it's for your automobiles, it's for your home.

And that is the miracle of this crop because it's very, very versatile.

(spirited music) - [Narrator] Modern agriculture is finding more value in our farm fields.

In Minnesota, plant fibers are being turned into building materials, manure and food waste are converted to methane biogas, and new perennial grains like kernza are being added to baked goods and brewed into beer.

(lively music) (upbeat music) About 35 years ago, the state of Minnesota launched AURI, a research institute with five laboratories that are investigating new opportunities and value added agriculture.

- So I've been with AURI for 24 years, and oftentimes people think, "That's a long time to be with one company."

The unique thing about working at AURI and working for AURI is we're always seeing new innovations, new ideas.

- [Bret] AURI helps entrepreneurs and established companies design and test ag derived products in areas like renewable energy, industrial products, and emerging food markets.

- Here at the AURI Bioindustrial Innovation Center, we focus on agricultural co-products, and that is generally a secondary product base after a primary product is developed.

So the best example I have is take ethanol.

You have corn in the commodity.

You haul that corn into an ethanol plant.

They make ethanol, that's your primary product, but the coal product is distillers.

Distillers once was viewed as a lower value coal product.

Well, here, with a lot of research R&D that the university, AURI, so many people in the industry have done, they realize that the distillers has the same energy value, the nutrient content that the original corn did.

And now it's being used in poultry diets and livestock diets all over the place.

(lively music) - [Narrator] With help from the state, AURI replaced an aging co-products lab in Waseca with a brand new facility that doubled the space for drying, pelleting, milling, and digesting.

Senior scientist Alan Doering showed us around the facility, starting with the decorticator AURI purchased to study hemp.

The machine's rollers crush hemp stocks and fingers tear fibers loose.

- And then you end up with your fiber that looks clean like wool.

Nice and fluffy.

- [Narrator] A pellet mill helps innovators design product prototypes.

- The size of that pellet is dictated by what type of die you use.

The smaller dies, those are typically used for fertilizers, new feed development, new feed additives.

So you can see we have quite a collection of dies.

So when we help companies develop or prototype their next product, we have a wide range to do the testing on.

Another service that we offer at AURI is drying.

You know, and we have such a focus here on agricultural coal products.

Oftentimes, those coal products are high in moisture.

When order to add value to 'em, you need to dry 'em.

That's typically a very expensive cost.

So there's different methods that we investigate.

So this is our fluidized dryer.

It's really cool when it runs.

(upbeat music) The food grade lab is another resource that we provide a lot of people.

We get various phone calls to produce food grade materials, and one of the things that has kept us most busy is cold pressing oil.

So over in this corner, you'll notice we have a Kern Craft cold oil press.

You put the seed in on the top.

There's a screw that keeps pushing that seed.

By friction, it generates heat.

That helps liberate or free some of the oil.

The oil drops out and the meal comes out the other end.

The next step is to come over here.

We have a oil press.

Put your oil in here, add air to put it under pressure.

It drives the oil through these plates and then into your collection vessel.

And you will end up with an oil that's just crystal clear, ready to go on a store shelf if you wanted to do that for prototype development or testing.

Or if you're doing actual cooking or frying tests, you can use it.

- [Narrator] The food lab includes retsch, burr, and stone mills.

- So there's different types of milling.

Very small scale, pilot scale, but just for generating test material for the clients that we serve.

Then the last thing that we do in here is our seed cleaning research.

What you'll see here is a impact dehuller.

What people might be most familiar with the product that goes a machine like this is think of your wild rice.

Another new grain that we're working with quite a bit is kernza.

These are grains that have a hole attached to the outside of them.

What you do is you slowly feed it into this machine.

Inside, there's a propeller turning around with with paddles that just basically throws it against the outside edge.

What that does is it shears or fractures that outside hull away from the grain.

From there, we take the material over to our sieve and we have a variety of screens to separate the fiber, the organic matter away from the seed, so your seed comes out clean.

There's a lot of interest in kernza, believe it or not, in the brewing and the distilling industry because of the unique flavors it brings.

- [Narrator] One of AURI's fastest-growing research areas is making biogas from ag waste.

- Here's where the product comes in.

Right here is our holding tank.

So we will get material on IVC totes, lift it up here with a forklift, dump it in, and it's ready for testing in the digester.

So we have two 1,500 gallon tanks that we operate as an anaerobic digester.

So with the focus on renewable natural gas, we are looking at evaluating different agricultural waste streams or feed stocks that are liquid that can be digested.

We'll identify how much methane will the material produce.

What we do is every day, we feed in a given amount, so we track the amount of material going into the digester.

We have flow meters where we know how much gas is being produced every day where we have equipment to plug into the port, measure the gas.

That's how we know how much methane is in the gas, CO, CO2, oxygen and so forth.

So we're able to give clients a very accurate profile of how their material is going to act in a scaled up digester.

There's a variety of companies in the state looking at operating a digester, cleaning up that methane, moving it into the gas line for renewable fuel.

We work with a lot of existing industry, a lot of entrepreneurs.

We help 'em develop new feed stocks.

We may help 'em develop or improve a current product or process that they already have in the marketplace.

Everything focused on adding value to agricultural commodities or grains or products from Minnesota.

(gentle spirited music) - [Announcer] Catch "Prairie Sportsman" on demand.

Watch anytime at prairiesportsman.org on the free PBS app or subscribe to our YouTube channel, @PrairieSportsman.

Don't miss an episode.

Watch on demand today.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Sportsman" is provided by: The Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, as recommended by the Legislative Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources.

And by Mark and Margaret Yeakel Jolene, on behalf of Shalom Hill Farm, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windham, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

(inspirational music)