Kat Ricker

It's new. It's unique. What's more, it may be a good crop for the climate and soils of the south Willamette Valley, and it may be a partial answer to Oregon's phase-out of field burning that grass growers have been trying to deal with the past several years. The question is: when will it begin to pay?

It's meadowfoam, an annual oilseed crop developed by Oregon State University and released to Oregon growers in 1984. It thrives in the relatively mild winters of the Pacific Northwest. It will grow in many types of soil, including poorly drained areas, where few other broadleaf crops will grow. According to many growers, it is the ideal rotation for grass seed fields.

Meadowfoam seeds (or nutlets) contain 20 - 30% of a unique oil. This oil is prized by the cosmetics industry and is suitable high-grade machine oil. There are 86 growers raising thousands of acres of meadowfoam in the Willamette Valley today. The seed is harvested and shipped to an oilseed crusher. It is then refined at another location in California. The capacities of both of these processing facilities are large, and they process an entire year’s crop of meadowfoam in a few days.

So far, the jury is still out on this new crop. OSU is very excited about its promise, but growers are still waiting to see profits. Mark Mellbye, the OSU extension agent for Linn, Benton and Lane counties, sees both sides of the situation.

"Meadowfoam is agronomically a nice fit in the south valley. But if growers can't get paid for it, then maybe it's better to fallow the ground. There is some discouragement, but hopefully it's just growing pains," says Mellbye. He is, however, optimistic about the future.

"It's such a good agronomic fit and such a unique oil, eventually growers should be able to establish those marketing channels."

The growers organized Natural Plant Products to pursue these markets.

The timing was right. Willamette Valley growers needed a new crop.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) discovered the uniqueness of meadowfoam oil during analysis of thousands of wild plants in the 1950s and 1960s. It was developed from a wild plant by a partnership of OSU and government researchers, growers and private industry.

One early speculation by some observers was that a market for the oil might be for machine lubrication. There was interest from some industries in seeking an alternative to sperm whale oil. Then, in late 1982, came the market call from the cosmetic industry that stimulated the formal launching of a potential new industry. Oregon State University’s Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station provided the invitation for grower involvement. Growers responded.

Something was happening to force Willamette Valley growers to rethink their plans. The government began to phase out field burning ... not to mention some years of low prices for grass seed.

In 1981, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) started charging a fee to growers to burn their fields after grass seed harvest. The money funded research for grass seed crop alternatives, to reduce smoke from field-burning in the valley.

In 1988, the now-famous fatal automobile accident on Interstate 5 forever changed the future of field burning. When smoke from a grass seed field reduced visibility, with disastrous results, the governor put a moratorium on field burning. Today, the Oregon Department of Agriculture is still concentrating on the permanent phase-out of field-burning in the state.

Meanwhile, back at OSU, DEQ-funded research continued on meadowfoam, which looked more attractive then ever. OSU determined meadowfoam could potentially become an economically viable alternative to grass seed production on poorly drained soils.

"One of the few things the grass seed farmers could grow instead of grass seed on their wet soils was meadowfoam," said OSU crop science researcher Jim Crane. "They could plant meadowfoam in the fall, just like grass or winter grains, using the same equipment. They could harvest it in June, swathing it in rows, and let it dry on the ground and come pick it up, just like grass or grain. And a year's rotation from grass seed to another kind of crop reduced the risk of disease buildup and grassy weeds."

"We were searching thousands of plants from all over the world to see if they could benefit man," explained Bob Kleiman, a retired consultant who worked on plant chemistry for 37 years with the USDA. "We were looking for new industrial oil seed crops, fiber crops, anti-tumor crops and any other plants with valuable substances. We found and characterized meadowfoam seed oil. It had unusual properties-new fatty acids never before found in any plant materials."

"Most vegetable oils, such as cottonseed or canola oils, contain chains of 16 or 18 carbons," explains Crane. "Meadowfoam seed containshigh percentages of 20- and 22-carbon chains. The longer the chain, the more stable the fatty acid, the better it will hold up in high temperatures, and the better lubricant it makes."

OSU crop researcher Gary Jolliff selected the Floral variety in 1985, and released the variety to the growers association in 1994, with exclusive licensing and marketing rights.

"Meadowfoam is probably one of the first new crops found by chemical analysis rather than historical use," said Steve Knapp, an oil seed crop geneticist with OSU's Agricultural Experiment Station who has worked on the genetics of meadowfoam the last 10 years, and is currently in the process of releasing to OMG, the new cultivar Knowles.

John Duerst has been growing meadowfoam at IOKA Farms in Silverton since 1984. The amount of acreage he rotates with grass varies from 175 to 400 acres. He says he has yet to make any money from it, but his hopes are still high.

"This is not a market that moves as fast as others. The product has to be introduced to these people, but everybody has high hopes of its potential, as yields improve and we learn more about growing it.

"Meadowfoam works well as a rotation for grass seed in the Willamette Valley, and part of the reason for that is the reduction of field burning. We also use herbicides, so rotation gives a good break for our perennial grass seed fields. It's not as good as the burning, but it's the best thing we have.

"We produce a crop of perennial grass seed for three to five crop years. We plant meadowfoam in October, and the crop is harvested in late June, first of July. There is very little residue left; that's one of the benefits. You can go right in and work that ground up for a fall-seeded grass crop."

The change-over poses no problem as far as herbicide residues go, Duerst says. The only herbicide he uses is Round-Up ^TM.

With the cooperation of the Oregon Department of Agriculture, the OMG has obtained three Section 24 Special Need Labels to assist in the control of broadleaf weeds and grasses

Is there another crop to grow in rotation every three years between the perennial grass production to control weeds and volunteer grasses?

"Yes," says Duerst, "but not a lot of crops that do not need to be irrigated. Meadowfoam is ideally suited for the south valley, where there's no irrigation. Bush beans work well for the north valley, but we don't have a lot of options here in the south end. There aren't any other crops except cereal grain crops, and they do not provide a justifiable return for even a rotation crop."

Duerst believes in the crop so much that he is president of OMG, Meadowfoam Oil Seed Growers, Cooperative Corporation. A nonprofit corporation was begun in 1984 with 24 growers to establish meadowfoam as a commercial crop. In 1997 an open-enrollment cooperative corporation, OMG, was established to continue the commercial development of meadowfoam. Today there are 86 growers, all in the Willamette Valley. All of them are grass seed growers.

Duerst says the meadowfoam story is one that needs to be told.

"The crop is not only unique, but the development of the crop is unique, since it was released to a growers cooperative, which controls production of meadowfoam. A wholely-owned subsidiary of the co-op, Natural Plant Products, LLC, is involved in the extraction, refining, and marketing of the oil. That's why we've hired a full-time field man for the coop, and a CEO."

The co-op has 120 customers, including Revlon.

Jerry Hatteberg is CEO of OMG and Natural Plant Products, LLC.

During this reorganization in 1997, the growers determined that it was in their best interest and the best interest of the new meadowfoam industry, to divide the overall functions and responsibilities between the two new organizations. OMG, as a grower cooperative, will involve itself in research with Oregon State University, and with seed production. It will pay to Oregon State University approximately $150,000 in the coming year for research on self-pollinated cultivar development and other aspects of meadowfoam development. Natural Plant Products, LLC will extract, refine, and market the oil. As an oil marketing company, it> '> s business objectives and expertise will be distinctly different from a seed production company. As a private company, it will have access to sources of capital not traditionally available to cooperatives. Usually, the grower is unable to benefit from value-added activities after the crop leaves the farm gate. This model is designed to retain, for the farmer, a fair share of the added value.

So far, one of the main drawbacks growers report is pollination. According to OSU, poor weather during pollination can have a significant effect on yield. Meadowfoam requires insect pollination, which grass seed growers find to be complicated and expensive.

"Pollination by bees has been one of the biggest headaches in meadowfoam production," said Crane. "Each flower has to be visited by honeybees several times for high seed set. And often only two seeds are set, rather than the full potential of five seeds per flower. The biggest cost in growing meadowfoam is renting bees. A grower needs to rent a lot of hives - at least two per acre, to get adequate pollination. At $35 per hive, that's a lot of money if you have hundreds of acres of the crop. And if the weather is cool or rainy during spring bloom, then the bees don't fly and you lose your possibilities for good pollination and high seed yields."

The most recent development in Meadowfoam research is that OSU's Jolliff has just been awarded $183,000 for research on meadowfoam as part of a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Fund for Rural America. Jolliff will emphasize work on improved oil yield per acre. He is collaborating with Oregon growers and researchers from other universities.

"Meadowfoam producers have made large investments, at high risk, in an effort to launch the new meadowfoam seed oil industry," said Jolliff, a professor of crop science at OSU. "It is important that these farmer-investors gain reasonable returns on their capital within a reasonable time period.

"The goal is to provide opportunities for farmers to position themselves to be competitive in sharing reasonable marketing margins. Historically, farmers have had little or no competitive position in pricing and marketing their produce. This circumstance is, again this year, driving thousands of U.S. farmers out of business because of low prices for their crops and livestock. We desire to change the way the system works."

Despite the risk, Duerst and many growers like him are vigorously committed to the marketing future of meadowfoam.

"This has the potential of becoming one of most important new crops of the century," says Duerst. "There's no other plant known that produces this particular unique fatty acid that this plant has. They haven't been able to produce a synthetic version, and if they did, it would

cost more to produce it than to grow the crop. It has a real good future. We're just getting production in line with the market. Based on current market usage, OMG has several years inventory of meadowfoam oil on hand."

Production Sidebar

South Willamette Valley growers are calling meadowfoam the ideal rotation for grass fields. Meadowfoam can be grown and harvested with the same equipment used in grass seed production, and production is similar to grass and grain crops as well.

Some things are different. Planting and harvest times differ, which extends equipment use and workload time. Its fertilizer requirements are less than other field crops or cereal crops.

The crop should not be grown repeatedly on the same field. Intercropping is not recommended, as Meadowfoam does not stand up to competition well. Intercropping also limits weed control options, and no herbicides are currently registered for this use.

While Meadowfoam will spread its shallow, fibrous root system in poorly drained "white land" soils, it naturally produces higher yields on better soils. Though it overwinters as a low growing rosette that can tolerate wet soils, it will not survive prolonged flooding. Soil should hold moisture; drought conditions in early spring can cause the plant to mature too quickly and yield less.

The seedbed should look like it is ready for grass seed - moderately fine, no large soil clods, firm. Plow, harrow and roll the bed. Meadowfoam seed is relatively small - 44,000 to 68,000 seeds per pound, averaging 50,000 - and good seed soil contact is needed for uniform germination.

Plant one-quarter to three-quarters of an inch deep with a standard grain drill. Space in 6-8 inch rows. OSU recommends planting 30-35 pounds per acre (1.5-1.8 million seeds).

There are two advantages to planting thick in narrow rows: one, it gives these non-competitive plants defense against weed infiltration; and two, the dense blooms will attract more bees.

And Meadowfoam does need bees. OSU says two or more honey bee colonies per acre are essential for good pollination. Three things can interfere with the best-laid pollination plans: cool, wet, windy weather; other flowering plants; and the distance of beehives from the meadowfoam field.

Bees may go to other crops if they have a choice. Avoid growing meadowfoam close to Brassicas, clovers, or vetches that will bloom at the same time. Place hives close to and throughout the field.

Studies at OSU have found that seed-zone soil temperatures below 60 degrees F are needed for good germination. Seed planted in warmer soil can develop secondary seed dormancy, leading to low germination. OSU recommends seeding in the first two weeks of October.

Go easy on the nitrogen, which will produce deceptively lush, green foliage, lodging and disease, while attracting unwanted insects. For best yield, the crop should look slightly yellow.

Harvest starts in late June. Meadowfoam is swathed like grass seed crops, but cuts much easier because of the comparatively small amount of biomass produced. Timing is everything - cut it when it is fully mature, but before it becomes dry and brittle, to minimize

seed loss. The seed is generally scalped and passed through a debearder prior to shipping for oil extraction.

While yields can vary dramatically from field to field and year to year commercial clean seed yields range from 400 to over 1,200 pounds per acre.

Farmers interested in growing meadowfoam should contact OMG (503) 363-6402.

(Sidebar is based on the 1997 OSU paper, "Growing Meadowfoam in the Willamette Valley" by D.T. Ehrensing, G.D. Jolliff, J. M. Crane and R.S. Karow)

Kat Ricker
Outreach Specialist
Oregon Department of Agriculture

Gary D. Jolliff
Professor of Crop Science
Oregon State University
Email: Gary.D.Jolliff@orst.edu
Telephone & Voicemail (541) 737-5849
Fax (541) 737-1589