The demand for greenfeed oat seed has been in response to a relatively dry winter, with Sustainable Farming Fund research showing oats is an excellent nutrient catch crop when following winter crop paddocks and new freshwater regulations.
Advance Agriculture’s managing director Howard Clarke says these factors have combined to put pressure on seed availability.
“You’d struggle now to find any,” she said.
Clarke says it is difficult to quantify the increased area sown in greenfeed oats, but it shows farmers are listening to advice.
As snow and rain buffeting Southland and Otago in recent weeks has shown, Clarke says having predetermined dates by which grazed winter crop paddocks must be resown as required in the new freshwater regulations is unworkable.
“The rules are unrealistic,” she said.
“Sometimes you can do it, sometimes you can’t.”
Federated Farmers Southland arable sector chair Chris Dillon says interest in catch crops has been growing for several years, but this year demand for seed has outstripped supply.
Dillon, who has an agricultural contracting business, says low prices for oats and oat seed have led to a reduced area being sown and the subsequent shortage.
He did not know how the recent two weeks of extreme wet weather has impacted sown crops.
The relatively dry end to winter enabled catch crops to be sown earlier using technology such as a single-pass spader drill, with oats used to soak up surplus nutrients.
According to a Beef + Lamb NZ study last year, sowing an oats catch crop after kale can capture 223kg/N/ha, nutrients that would potentially be lost to the environment.
The study found oats were ideal because they are winter active, deep rooting so capture more nitrogen, and suited to Otago and Southland growing conditions.
By using the single-pass spader drill, crop establishment in a trial near Gore was seven weeks earlier than conventional cultivation and sowing, resulting in nearly double the dry matter production and greater nitrogen uptake.
