WSU to hold oilseed workshop in Hartline

MOSES LAKE — With oilseeds growing in importance to farmers across the Pacific Northwest, Washington State University is holding a series of workshops for oilseed farmers across the region in late January.

“They’re grown in rotation with cereal crops as a way of weed and disease control,” said Karen Sowers, a WSU extension and outreach specialist.

The closest workshop is scheduled for Monday, Jan. 22 in Hartline at the Historic Hartline School, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

According to Sowers, the primary oilseed grown in the region is canola, which is a low acid oilseed developed by Canadian growers in the early 1970s. However, mustard seed, sunflowers, safflowers, camelina and flax are finding fertile fields in the Columbia Basin.

Much of the canola grown locally is processed locally at the Pacific Coast Canola facility in Warden, Sowers said, though some is shipped to the West Side for conversion into biodiesel.

“There’s a canola meal that’s also produced from the oil pressing process, and it’s highly prized for livestock,” Sowers said. “It’s much higher in protein than soymeal.”

Sowers said mustard, as a “hot” crop, is a good natural fumigant to grow in rotation with potatoes, since the plant’s spicy oil chases away many of the tiny pests that lurk in the soil.

“They don’t chase away everything,” Sowers said. “But we see more of it every year.”

The workshops will include sessions on how to improve yields, how to best use canola in rotation, and how to manage canola fields.

“We started these back in 2011,” Sowers said. “We’ve scaled them back to smaller town workshops to reach more farmers. We show live canola plants, what they look like if they don’t get enough nutrients, for example. There are a lot of hands on components.”

Workshops are also scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 24, in Richland, and Thursday, Jan. 25 in Colfax. Cost to attend is $20 if you pre-register or $25 at the door. To register, go to the WSU oilseeds page www.css.wsu/oilseeds or call 509-396-5936.