Canola controversy.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

ALBANY - The stray turnip, its new leaves poking up through the soil between rows of cabbage on Skip Gray's farm, caught his eye almost instantly.

He bent over and pulled up the volunteer.

"That's what I'm talking about," he said. It's been seven years since Gray grew turnips in this field, yet the seed has stayed viable in the ground, volunteering when it's least wanted.

Coupled with his farm and nearby land he leases from neighbors, Gray grows 70 different crops on 1,600 acres just northeast of a bend in the Willamette River.

Among the most lucrative of his plants are the brassicas, a family that includes radish, cabbage, mustard, cauliflower, turnips and broccoli. Gray grows them for seed,

but brassicas are tricky. The fields must be grown with buffers around them to assure that harvested seed is uncontaminated by any other seeds.

A complex system exists to help the Willamette Valley's vegetable seed farmers keep their fields free of invaders.

But the job is about to get more challenging. Canola - a member of the brassicas - may be coming to the Willamette Valley.

Currently banned west of the Cascades to protect vegetable fields, canola is becoming an attractive option for grass seed growers looking for a rotation crop to help them clean up their fields.

Meanwhile, statewide interest in sustainable practices and concerns about climate change and energy independence have driven a burgeoning biodiesel industry.

The issue has some farmers torn between supporting such green causes but also wanting to preserve their livelihood.

While the ban on canola remains in place for at least another year, the state Department of Agriculture has permitted several test plots to allow Oregon State University researchers to better understand canola's impacts.

The biodiesel industry isn't waiting for those results. On Friday, Willamette Biomass Processors opened Western Oregon's first canola seed crushing plant in Rickreall, a small town northwest of Salem.

The new plant's annual capacity: 80 million pounds of oil seeds. It translates into about 3 million gallons of vegetable oil.

Last year Oregon produced 1.6 million pounds of canola, most of it grown in Morrow, Umatilla and Wallowa counties.

Plant CEO Craig Parker touts the new facility as a great opportunity to convert Oregon-grown crops into biodiesel and livestock feed.

But the valley's vegetable seed growers have several concerns.

Besides volunteering in fields, it can cross-pollinate to create hybrids that contaminate other brassica seeds. Canola also brings in pests and disease that can impact the other crops, said Troy Rodakowski, manager of Pacific Seed Production, a Junction City firm that contracts with area farmers for seeds.

High value crops

Vegetable growers also worry about the potential use of genetically modified canola, commonly grown in other parts of the country.

Some seed buyers from Europe and Asia, who prize the brassicas grown in the Willamette Valley, have said they'll stop buying from Oregon if genetically modified canola is grown here, Rodakowski said.

"Asian customers are scared of the GMO trait being transferred onto a high-dollar, high-value crop," he said.

How high value a crop?

A 4-acre cabbage field in Junction City recently netted a grower $60,000, Rodakowski said.

Gray said that he can net $3,000 per acre for some of his seed crops. The value of some harvests can be destroyed by just half a dozen stray seeds per batch of 10,000, he added.

In 2007, the Willamette Valley had 12,000 acres in vegetable and flower seed production, according to Oregon State University Extension Service estimates. The total value of the crop was estimated at $23 million, about $400,000 of it in Lane County.

That's just a slice of the $4.4 billion in annual agricultural sales in Oregon, and small compared to the valley's grass seed industry, which has close to 500,000 acres in cultivation with annual sales well over $300 million.

But up until recently, grass seed farmers had little interest in canola.

Three years ago, canola seed fetched such a low price - about .10 per pound with a yield of 2,000 pounds per acre - it wasn't financially viable.

But with fuel prices skyrocketing, a growing biodiesel infrastructure, and new strains that yield more seeds per acre, grass seed farmers are starting to pay attention.

Kathy Freeborn, who owns a farm with her dad in Rickreall, grew one of the test crops last year for OSU and will grow another test crop this year.

"We actually netted about $375 more per acre on our canola than we did from our adjacent intermediate rye grass field," Freeborn said.

Canola doesn't require any new equipment of grass seed farmers, Freeborn said.

Its potential for pests and diseases means growers would only use it in a four-year rotation on their grass seed fields, Freeborn said.

She expects that the research conducted by OSU will help determine ways to keep canola from damaging vegetable seed plots.

Vegetable seed growers already have a system for keeping the other brassicas grown here from contaminating each other.

They use maps, displayed at OSU Extension Service offices, with pins delineating the fields that require isolation. Set up on a first-come, first-served basis, growers must make sure any new fields of brassicas are an appropriate distance from those already designated by area farmers.

Gray also keeps his own fields isolated, separating different kinds of cabbage by 3.5 miles, using a sophisticated GPS system to help him assure seed purity.

He and his farm hands also regularly walk the boundaries and rows of their fields, hand pulling or spraying whenever they encounter volunteer plants that could pose a problem.

Once canola comes into the valley, its seeds will volunteer everywhere and can last for years in the ground, Gray said.

The seeds will also be moved around by farm equipment and no amount of careful washing will remove them, Gray said.

Despite the risks, Gray is conflicted.

"I'm not opposed to biofuels," he said. "I've got friends who want to grow canola and it would be hard for me to tell my friends that they can't grow want they want to grow."

Suitable weather for growing

Canola can be safely grown in eastern Oregon and is currently being grown on hundreds of thousands of acres across the Midwest, said Rodakowski, the Junction City seed buyer.

But the Willamette Valley with its mild winters, and hot summers with little rainfall remains one of just a few areas in the world suited for growing vegetable seed.

"It's a garden of Eden. If you look at a climate map of the world, you're only going to see this little spot of color in five or six places," Rodakowski said.

Oregon's vegetable seed industry is growing because European seed growers have seen their fields contaminated by canola, sending more buyers to the Willamette Valley, he said.

For now, all eyes are on the OSU researchers, who have been looking at how much isolation canola would require, the impact of pests and diseases, and the potential for growing other oil seed crops - flax, safflower and meadowfoam, for example - that don't pose a threat to brassica seed crops.

Meanwhile, the state Department of Agriculture has formed an advisory committee to try and help it steer a middle course, said ODA administrator Dan Hilburn.

"The department is trying to help preserve the important agriculture we have here, but we're also into promoting new uses for agriculture," Hilburn said.