10/12/07 Montana's Camelina

Montana's Camelina. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. Camelina has been around for quite some time but has only recently come to the public's attention. Montana has been pursuing camelina as a rotation crop and according to Governor Brian Schweitzer, camelina is a great crop for producers to get into. SCHWEITZER: Camelina has such great potential in a place like Montana because it'll grow from as low as 10 inches of precipitation, we know that it will grow at 2,000 to 6,000 feet in elevation, it matures about 30 days earlier than spring wheat, it germinates at cooler temperatures than virtually all the weeds and jumps up out of the ground with great big leaves and gets ahead of the weeds and so this is a very competitive crop, it's a great rotation for wheat and barley. Camelina can be planted either late in the fall or first thing in the spring. The downside at the moment has been wheat prices. Farmers would rather have a good wheat crop with record prices than grow camelina. But there are a great many benefits to camelina according to Gov. Schweitzer. SCHWEITZER: The exciting thing about camelina is that it produces omega-3 oil which is fish oil. Many of you listening know that this kind of oil is supposed to be good for the heart so if you can grow a crop and produce a thousand, fifteen hundred pounds of a crop that is roughly 40% oil and it's an omega-3 oil for a cooking oil or you can convert it to biodiesel and know out 75 or a 100 gallons of biodiesel per acre, we've got something we can wrap our arms around. Ah yes, biodiesel. Because camelina is so high in oil content it may be one of the best alternatives for generating biodiesel and because it can be grown in such marginal areas farmers can make use of questionable land. A lot of farmers though have been holding out because prices and to that the Governor says& SCHWEITZER: Look, you need to get your foot in the door. If you're running three or four thousand acres of wheat, put in a 100 acres or a 150 acres of camelina because you need to get in the game. You're not going to be a great producer of camelina until you have some experience with it and you shouldn't wait until the price of camelina is at 25 cents and wheat's at 4.50 bucks, you might as well get some experience now and plus it makes a great rotation. Montana had anticipated having around 100-thousand acres this year but in reality only about 40-thousand acres were planted. Dr. Duane Johnson has been the primary researcher of camelina. SCHWEITZER: He's put the last six year into it and grabbed some seed  a lot of it came out of Asia Minor, sort of Turkey up into Russia and there had been really no agronomic work done of this plant. The future looks bright for camelina in both a food and biodiesel. For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network. www.harvestcleanenergy.org www.camelinacompany.com