Five minutes with farmer Allan Richardson on growing organic oats

Avalon owner Allan Richardson has been growing organic grain for milk near Heriot. Photo / Southern Rural Life files

Southern Rural Life's Shawn McAvinue spends five minutes talking to West Otago sheep and beef farmer Allan Richardson about growing organic oats.

I hear you've had a part to play in the new Otis Oat Milk product The Organic One. When did you diversify your farm operation to growing oats?

We were asked if we'd like to grow some because they were looking to develop their organic line and we said "yup, we'll give it a go" and we grew the oats two seasons ago.

How did the season go?

We did 3.5ha and we produced about 14 tonne.

Is that a good result?

I was talking to Harraways and they thought it was a pretty good yield for the season.

Did the crop require much care?

No, it's probably the easiest grain to grow and it's probably the best on the soil too. We undersowed it with clover so we had some living roots in the ground and to give it a bit of nitrogen as it was growing.

Rather than just have bare ground at the end, we had a crop of clover to graze.

Did you grow oats again the next season?

We only grew it for the one season. They had two farms growing for them [also Lilybank Station at the top of Lake Tekapo] so they got enough to go away and test it and prove the concept.

What's next?

Growing grain is not our core business but until they come back with contracts, we will wait and see.

Could you see a future of running fewer livestock to grow some oats?

We probably want to do less tractor work, rather than more of it but it does make sense to have another income stream, as well as sheep and beef.

The last three out of four summer/autumn periods have been really tough and perhaps we will have to drop our stocking rate and grow more summer fattening crops if it's going to keep getting dry on us.

Should sheep and beef farmers growing oats for milk raise concerns in the dairy farming sector?

It's a niche market. I've got no problem drinking cow's milk and the consumer gets to decide - they're both healthy options.