Oregon grass seed acreage this spring is down
Oregon grass seed acreage is down slightly this year, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service office in Portland.
Growers will have 118,000 acres of annual ryegrass available for harvest this summer, down about 4 percent from 2015, NASS reported.
Acreage of perennial ryegrass is at 97,000 this year, the same as last, and turf type tall fescue and forage type tall fescue also are unchanged at 115,000 acres and 15,000 acres, respectively. Acreage of K-31 type tall fescue is at 9,000 this year, down from 10,000 in 2015.
Roger Beyer, executive director of the Oregon Seed Council, said the acreage numbers reported by NASS are “right in the ballpark.”
“There’s nothing alarming in the report that I could point to,” he said.
Beyer said grass seed acreage often fluctuates, especially in the Willamette Valley, where farmers switch back and forth between wheat and grass seed.
He said the domestic market for grass seed has largely recovered from the recession, when demand plummeted as homebuilding and other development stalled. The export market, however, has slowed in response to the strong U.S. dollar, which makes Oregon seed more expensive, Beyer said.
The NASS report said 2015 yields were down due to drought. Damage from lack of water was “very apparent in the fall and some fields were slow to recover,” the agency said.
A recent report from Oregon State University Extension bears that out. In 2014, Oregon farmers harvested 269 million pounds of annual ryegrass on 120,830 acres. In 2015, acreage increased slightly to 121,290 acres, but produced only 220 million pounds of seed.
This spring brought adequate moisture and growers are hoping for a break from the dry weather of last year, NASS reported. Growers reported damage this past winter from cut worms, mice and slugs, NASS said.