Hay grower Steve Kandra examines the experimental teff planting in Klamath Falls, Ore. Five tons of teff seed were shipped this past winter to curious farmers across the country.

Interest grows in raising Ethiopian grain as hay

Tam Moore
Oregon Staff Writer

8/26/2005

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. – Teff was just a footnote in 2004 research reports for the Oregon State University Klamath Experiment Station. Then the warm-weather grain and forage crop got a report in a national magazine.

Ken Rykbost, the retired experiment station superintendent who helped design teff experiments, said phone calls came from all over the country.

He recounted the story from the back of a flatbed truck at this summer’s annual field day. Along for the ride was Laverne Hawkins, a seed dealer from nearby Bonanza who stepped in to help.

When all was said and done, said Hawkins, 5 tons of teff seed, grown in the Willamette Valley for test-milling as flour, had been sold in small lots to curious growers across the United States. Rykbost said he has contact with many of those people and will get reports on their harvest.

At the Klamath station, meanwhile, research agronomist Rich Roseburg has a new crop of teff to harvest. Similar trials are at the Medford and Ontario OSU research sites and at the University of California Intermountain Research and Extension Center in Tulelake, Calif.

Roseburg calls teff “promising” as a forage crop. Ethiopians are credited with developing the crop centuries ago as a grain. The big question here, said Rykbost, is frost resistance. Written reports say frost can kill a stand.

In the Klamath Basin, where historically frost can happen any month of the year, there hasn’t been a summer frost since the first 59 teff varieties were sowed in 2003 to begin evaluation.

What Roseburg does know is that horse owners like the forage, which is similar to Timothy hay. Technician Jim Smith said standard grass hay weed control herbicides work well with teff.

As an intercropping trial, Roseburg drilled teff seed into a plot of triticale stubble after early summer harvest. Results of this year’s teff work is expected in the KES annual research report published each winter.

Among additions to the alternative crop research at Klamath this year are lingonberries. They are native to Scandinavia, where frost-tolerance is part of the deal. Fourteen lingonberry cultivars are in the 2005 Klamath planting.

Tam Moore is based in Medford, Ore. His e-mail address is tmoore@capitalpress.com.