Practical Oat Production 101 at PFI’s Annual Conference

By Sam Raser

Sam Raser is grain merchandiser for Grain Millers, Inc. Sam has worked with Grain Millers for six years, with a focus on specialty grains. Along with Bruce Roskens, also from Grain Millers, and PFI Farmer Dan Wilson, Sam will be speaking at the session titled “Practical Oat Production 101,” on Saturday January 25th during PFI’s Annual Conference. 

Find out why the oat markets maintain small spreads to corn, and why oat basis levels remain strong, while Canada had a record crop in 2013! Grain Millers is one of the North America’s leading oat processors and can provide you with up to date global oat market commentary. Grain Millers is committed to and heavily invested in the latest oat research, production, and marketing. Oats offer Iowa farmers a low cost option to mellow their soils between corn and soy beans, while also offer a companion crop to underseeded crops like alfalfa and clover.  We feel that with this rotation farmers can greatly reduce their input costs, by breaking up their disease and pest patterns. In this session we will cover the history of oat production in North America, current market trends and what we feel the future of the oat market holds for us. It was not that long ago when all of the oats processed in the US were grown in the U.S. It can be done! However, understand these are not your grandfathers oats. We take a much more scientific approach to oats and want our farmers to understand the difference between growing a “crop” vs. growing an “ingredient” This starts from the time you pick your variety to seeding rates and also harvest and storage as well. All of these steps will play a factor in growing an ingredient vs a commodity and will also be discussed in this session.

 PFI member Craig Fleishman in his oat field (underseeded with clover).