A YouTube video titled "Scientists Tested 41 Cover Crop Mixes for 6 Years" claims a University of Minnesota research team ran a six-season trial and found one three-species cover crop mix that outperformed every other combination by 210%. The 49-minute video, posted May 6 by a channel called Soil & Centuries, says the team tracked nitrogen transfer rates, mycorrhizal network density and weed suppression across hundreds of thousands of data points.
None of it happened. The study does not exist.
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University of Minnesota Extension educators said the video is artificial intelligence "slop" — fabricated content built to draw clicks and advertising revenue. They have reported it, and commented on it, but it's still up. As of mid-July, the video had more than 36,000 views. It had roughly 11,000 when Extension educators first learned of it.
"I don't know how anybody could realistically do a study that they're quoting in this video," said Liz Stahl, the University of Minnesota Extension educator for crops who first flagged the video publicly. "It's huge. It's impossible."
Stahl found out about the video this spring, from an email with the subject line: "Is any of this true." The sender worked for a soil and water conservation district, but Stahl said her first thought was that the message itself might be a scam.
"I was wondering, is this a phishing thing or something? Is this legit?" she said. "I was kind of reluctant to click on their link. But they looked for real. I Googled them, and it's like, OK, this place actually exists."
Then she watched the opening of the video.
"Right away, they're talking about 41 different cover crop mixes, and doing this over six years," Stahl said. "Where in the world would we ever have the space, the time and the money to do a huge project like that?"
The video names a University of Minnesota faculty member Stahl has worked with on cover crops for years, so she called him.
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"I don't think he's doing anything like this," Stahl said. "But I thought, well, I better just double check, because you never know for sure. I don't want to just assume."
He also told her he had no idea who made the video, according to a May 27 Extension blog post in which Stahl described the incident. The video names a second university, as well.
"Someone, or something, made a video using fabricated information, while claiming we were the source of the information," Stahl wrote in the post.
University of Minnesota Extension's communications team confirmed the video was AI-generated and told Stahl the motive appears to be advertising revenue driven by clicks. She declined to name the video or the colleague it cites, saying she did not want to send it more traffic.
She also never watched the whole thing.
"I've got other things to do than watch a 49-minute-long video that I know is garbage," she said. "I can tell it's garbage from the first minute."
Reporting and commenting on the video has not moved the needle to remove it. The Soil & Centuries page lists 67 other videos, all with cover screens that are clearly AI-generated.
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"I've done what you're supposed to do," Stahl said. "I've reported it. I've commented on it. Colleagues have commented on it that it's fake. They've reported it, too. But it's tripled in viewership since we originally were made aware of its existence."
The video's description lists resource links to the supposed trial data. Stahl said commenters have asked for working links and received promises that were never fulfilled.
"They don't send links, because it doesn't exist," she said. "The research doesn't exist."
Stahl pointed to several tells that the video is fake and cautioned others to look for the signs when they take in similar content. Sensationalized claims, stock photos, citations that lead nowhere, and a narrator who never stumbles, which is something another viewer flagged to her after they found the video themselves.
"They said, 'Oh, they just talk so perfectly. You know, they enunciate everything,'" Stahl said. "It's an AI voice. We don't talk like that. We have the ums and all that kind of stuff."
In the comments, she said, viewers are taking the claims at face value.
"There's a lot of people that are just believing all this stuff," she said. "It's pseudoscience. It's not real science."
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Colleagues at other universities have since contacted her. Several said they had never heard of AI content fabricating land-grant research. Stahl expects it will not be the last.
"This is just one instance. I mean, who knows how many other things are out there?" she said. "I'm not out there trolling on the internet trying to find fake things. Luckily somebody contacted us. But I'm afraid this might just be one of the first of many."
Her advice is to go to the source. University of Minnesota Extension publishes research through field days, webinars, podcasts, its Strategic Farming program, the MN Crop News blog, and it operates a verified YouTube channel.
"If you're interested in soil health and cover crops, reach out to the people that are doing that at your local land-grant university," Stahl said. "Take advantage of what we're offering out there — versus these unknown entities."
The alternative is a slicker product with nothing behind it.
"We don't have all the glitter," Stahl said, "but at least it's true."