profit growing oats

Can you make a profit growing oats! I live in pa and looking for
something else to grow! Like the idea to plant early and harvest
in the summer!

I believe you can, and its nice to harvest that time of year vs corn in rain soaked fields, and or other later season weather problems, happens in summer too around here, you never know what you'll get.

Grain crop we did here, did well, straw especially. Not too many issues, some down crop, had to put those pick up guides on the grain head, too much nitrogen, tall stalks, could lay down, was the only trouble we had, but the longer guides worked very well, not much loss. I sort of enjoyed doing this kind of crop, we did it 2008-2010 last time it was close to 150 acres of it. As its been said the grain may cover your costs, straw is your profit, seems to work, need clean straw, so weed control is important, makes cleaner grain. I think from what you put in, its ok, a paycheck at best, not sure what the rotation is, how many years consecutively, I had a nice crop in our small field, first season minimal inputs, sprayed for weeds.

I have grazing cattle.

I plant 10 acres of oats with alfalfa, clover, and turnips in the small seed alfalfa box.

Swath the oats, combine the grain.

Side rake and bale the straw.

Wait a month or 2, fence it and graze the regrowth.

That is some productive ground for me, but I'd be nuts to plant the whole farm to oats. Corn is king around here.

Tho if corn sinks below $3.50, maybe a whole farm of oats will lose less than corn will!

Paul

IF the land is paid for and you don't need much return from the land then you can break even with oats.

IF you can grow high test weight oats that will meet the food requirements(Quaker Oats, Cedar Rapids) then there is SOME profit in oats. If they don't make grade and you have just livestock feed oats then your going to be lucky to break even.

A good straw market will help but that is more labor too.

There used to be a lot of oats planted around me here. Now you only see them as a nurse crop for new hay stands.

To get the real high quality oats you just about have to windrow them when they have some moisture in them. Then use a pickup head on your combine to thrash them.

With the average cash rent being in the $350-450 range here oats just will not show a profit or even a break even here.

For real good oats you need to get them planted as early as possible, usually mid to early March here. Then you want a little rain and a slightly dry spring. Oats like most cereal grains do not like high moisture. There are too many deceases that effect them when you have high humidity.

I don't think PA is a real good oat growing area. Your soils are clay based for the most part and oats like dry feet. Plus you usually have high humidities in the late spring and summer months. Right when the oats want warm/dry weather not hot humid weather. That is way you see oat being grown in the northern areas most of the time. They usually do not have hot humid springs and early summers.

Right now if your renting ground you are going to be stuck in a corn and soybean rotation for the short term. IF the grain prices come down and land cost comes down then you may be able to work oats into a rotation. IF you do raise any you really should have livestock as a backup plan if the weather makes the oats be of low quality. You can at least fed them up. There is not a good oat market. You can't just drive to town and sell them anytime, it takes planning.

Around here, which is NH, a fifty pound bale of straw can push $15.00 at times. I bet you could make money on that. Check your straw market.

2 years ago, there was an article in the "St Paul
Pioneer Press". (Pioneer, because it"s Minnesota"s
oldest Newspaper) It said that General Mills was
the largest buyer of Oats in the world. But 90%
of their purchases were from Canada !
That"s because Oats is a cool weather crop,
(doesn"t like heat) and the climate, and soil in
Canada grows "The Best" Oats!
Find a Market before you buy seed.

I don't know, but I would think so if you can grow then. our feed mill hasent had oats the last 2 winters, I guess because of the weather nobody can grow them around here.

About 12 years back I planted 60 acres of oats as I had found a nitch cleaning, bagging and selling it to horse farmers. That year here in south central Mn. we had extremely good weather conducive to raising oats. At years end I had 2 semi loads left so I sent a sample to General Mills in St. Paul and it made there quality standards at the time. Had a semi haul it up there and turned out really good on money. Baled the straw and found a good market for the small squares. Over all a very prophet-able crop. But the next year the quality was terrible and I couldn't even give the oats away.

I have managed to get a few regular customers who like to feed oats to there horses, sheep, goats etc. and don"t have storage for bulk, so I sell it to them bagged. I am a very small time operator however , most I have grown was about 40 ton. A bit of work bagging, but if you get set up right for it and have a hard working wife like I do to feed the cleaner while you bag, its not that bad of work. I have found that growing good oats around here anyway (Woodville Ontario Canada) requires the following:
1. get it in early
2. about 250/lb/acre appropriate fertilizer
3. fungicide ( I usually use stratego) at about half rate with first application of herbicide
4. fungicide full rate about two weeks later,depending on weather and growth stage. ( I have applied full rate ,mixed with herbicide as weather/timing didn"t allow me to spray herbicide as early as I should have)
5.Pray the weather doesn"t put it down on you as oats seem to be notorious for going down
Im not sure if it is a coincidence or not but I seem to get the best crop on fresh ground. Last year I had some on a old pasture field that hadn"t been worked for at least 40 yrs that yielded at least 110 bushels/acre that weighed well over 40 lbs/bushel. I guess I still have not answered your question- Yes you can make money if every thing goes as it should and mother nature co-operates. I have not worked it out exactly as I do it more for the enjoyment of doing a bit of farming with my old Oliver stuff. My best guess on a average year, after all expenses would be around $200/acre ( not including my labour , or any depreciation on equipment. ( the two old combines I have where given to me!)
If you are only talking a small acreage, then why not give it a shot, if it doesn't pan out, I have heard people say it makes great green feed baled up?

Back in 88 we planted more oats. Well that was a dry winter, could get out early, so I planted oats, and planted, and planted... Put in a lot of oats that year.

Then 88 was the worst drought around here, corn and beans burned up.

That year they also discovered oats helped some with high blood pressure, so everyone wanted to put oats in every baking product or cereal they made....

The net result was corn oats was worth a whole bunch that year, and by dumb luck I planted a lot of it. One of my most profitable years back then, and it was in one of the worst growing years ever. I had a field of corn yield 20bu to the acre. But that oats sure made me some money.

I would not plan for such a thing tho.

Paul

I'd venture carefully... You'll probably find it's a very localised thing. Some places you can probably get good money for the oats and the straw. Other places oats are basically grown for a rotation crop. It's quite common in potato country in this region... and they sell the stuff so damn cheap that you won't get ahead on that alone. At a certain level you could probably make it work but you won't get rich...

Rod

I would advise against it. I sowed about 20 sections of wild oats in my younger days and not much good came of it!

Gene

I can read between the lines on this one. Grin

I live about 20 miles from 2 of the largest oat users in the nation, Quaker and National. neither one has receiving facilities and the elevators do not either.

I would check out your market first.

"I would check out your market first."

Wise words. I am amazed at how many start up businesses around here apparently don't do that. Then they wonder why in 6 months or less they are out of business and broke/in debt for the stupid venture.

Besides that, if somebody loaned them the startup money they deserve what they get if they didn't have a market survey and product analysis completed before loaning any money.

Mark