Iowa produces larger crop of oats

CEDAR RAPIDS - Favorable conditions throughout the growing season enabled Iowa farmers to produce a larger crop of oats this year.

The state's oat crop totaled 4.2 million bushels in 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, up 20 percent from 3.5 million bushels in 2014.

Winneshiek County was the largest oat-producing county in Iowa at 243,000 bushels, according to estimates released by the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service. Allamakee County was second with 196,000 bushels and Jackson County was third at 85,500 bushels.

Northeast Iowa was the largest oat-producing district with 1.3 million bushels.

The highest yielding county was Lyon with a yield of 104 bushels per acre. Johnson was the lowest yielding county at 54.9 bushels per acre.

The East Central district, which includes Benton, Clinton, Iowa, Linn, Jackson, Johnson, Jones, Muscatine and Scott counties, had the largest drop in yield at 64.9 bushels per acre, down 2.1 bushels per acre from 2014.

The PepsiCo Quaker Oats plant in Cedar Rapids mills millions of bushels of oats each year. With approximately 5,000 bushels of oats per rail car, the plant needs several thousand cars of oats annually.

Most of the plant's oat supply comes from western Canada, where the quality has improved in recent years.

Oats peaked in 1876 with about 3.4 million acres planted in Iowa, according to the National Agriculture Statistic Service. The state's once-abundant oat crop left in the early 1900s along with horse-powered farm tools.

By the 1940s, oats were down to 1 million acres planted annually. In 2015, 125,000 acres were planted by Iowa farmers, down from 145,000 acres in 2014.

There are two major groups growing oats in Iowa: organic farmers and small-scale livestock producers. according to Margaret Smith, program specialist in small grains with the Value Added Agriculture Program at Iowa State University.

It costs about $400 an acre to grow an oat crop, according to Iowa State University estimates. Typical yield is between 70 and 100 bushels per acre.