Opportunity knocks for oats in Minnesota

Oats were once a major Minnesota crop, with about 4 million acres planted annually on average until the early 1960s. But in 2025, oats accounted for only 195,000 planted acres in Minnesota, and those oats were used mostly for livestock feed and straw bedding. Meanwhile, corn planted in 2025 covered more than 8 million acres in the state. 

But with a new, $68 million food-grade oat mill expected to start accepting its first loads in August, a new market may be emerging for farmers. Farmer-owned Green Acres Milling, based in Albert Lea, expects to process up to 4 million bushels (an estimated 40,000 acres) of gluten-free oats per year, said Matt Kruger, director of strategy and development for the mill.

Over 90% of oats processed in the Midwest come primarily from Canada, where oats are an ideal short-season crop when compared to corn and soybeans.

Kruger said there’s an ongoing demand for oat beverages and gluten-free oats due to their high-protein and high-fiber content. The new mill will process domestic oats that will be traceable to the mill’s 100-plus farmer-owners. 

Kruger expects most farmers to transport their oats from locations 1 to 2 hours away. That will include his own farm, where he’ll plant 80 acres of oats destined for food-grade processing this spring. He’s also excited about the mill’s proximity to Midwest food companies that need oat ingredients for their consumer products, thereby shortening the supply chain.

Adding oats to the rotation

With an eye toward potential new markets for food-grade oats and other small grains, Extension is offering its first Grain Gathering on February 18 in Rochester. According to Extension Educator Mary Nesberg, who organized the event, oats and other small grains can potentially boost profitability and resilience for farmers in the Upper Midwest.

Nesberg said a three-year, three-crop rotation of corn-soybean-oats works well because oats can be planted easily in the spring after soybeans, which leave minimal residue. Corn, a heavier nitrogen feeder, can be planted the year after oats. If oats are interseeded or underseeded with nitrogen-fixing clover, farmers can potentially reduce nitrogen fertilizer applications on corn. 

Oats can be a tricky crop because they are planted as early as March (much earlier than corn and soybeans). It’s a timing challenge: while oats can handle snow, they’re susceptible to hard frosts, which are difficult to predict in Minnesota during late winter and spring. 

“Some people frost-seed in late February or early March,” Nesberg said. “Most people have finished planting their oats by mid-April.” 

Risk to resilience

Another Extension partner, the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnerships (MCAP), is also addressing the role of oats and other small grains as part of its Risk to Resilience program, said MCAP Extension Educator Katie Black.

“We want to help farmers adapt their operations to changing and extreme weather patterns, but also talk about whole-farm planning for resilience,” she said. “Oats provide a good pathway for talking about diversification because of their potential economic and environmental benefits. They’re a timely example, given the market opportunities and general support for them developing in the state.”

Oats might also help reduce nitrate runoff and leaching when used as a third crop in a traditional corn-soybean rotation or as a fall cover crop. Nesberg said research shows that fields planted with small grains can reduce nitrate concentration in drainage water by up to 50% compared with traditional two-crop systems. Furthermore, farmers who are also underseeding their oats with medium red clover are taking nitrogen credits of around 75 pounds per acre for the following year’s corn crop.

“Here in southeastern Minnesota, the more we can do to decrease nitrogen rates, the better it is for our groundwater,” Nesberg said.

As a fall cover crop, oats offer special benefits: unlike a common cereal rye cover crop (which survives the winter and must be killed with an herbicide in the spring), oats grow quickly in the fall, soak up nitrogen, and then die naturally when the temperature drops, making for easier spring planting.

A new oat variety

The University of Minnesota, which has studied and bred oat varieties for more than a century, is officially releasing a new oat variety in 2026 called MN-Amber.

University of Minnesota oat breeder Kevin Smith, in the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, said the variety was bred with food-grade harvesting in mind. Good straw strength enables easier harvests by helping the crop withstand storms better. Good test weight, plus high protein and high beta-glucan (soluble fiber) content, make MN-Amber a great fit for food manufacturers. 

“It’s the culmination of a lot of work,” Smith said of the breeding process. “It’s pretty exciting.”

Select certified seed producers will grow the new MN-Amber variety this coming spring. In 2027, seed should be more widely available to other producers, Smith said, adding that even more varieties geared toward food-grade oats are in the pipeline as well. 

Although university researchers have bred oat varieties for more than a century, the program paused for six years, ending in 2015. MN-Amber is the second introduction for the revived program and offers substantially improved yield, test weight and grain protein compared with MN-Pearl, introduced in 2019.

“When we rebooted the program, we decided we were going to put more of an emphasis on food-grade oats as opposed to forage or feed oats,” Smith said. “I think that, with good variety selection and close attention to diseases, nitrogen fertilizer application and timely harvest, milling oats could be quite successful in Minnesota.”

Looking at logistics

Extension Small Grains Agronomist Jochum Wiersma said the biggest challenges for oats could be relative price and risk compared to other commodities, plus a learning curve for farmers on crop insurance structures and on-farm grain storage.

While Minnesota ranks second in the U.S. for on-farm grain storage, following Iowa, Wiersma said, “most of that capacity in the southern half of the state was built for corn and soybeans, not oats, which require different airflow.”

Not having a commodity group backing oats, meanwhile, means researchers at public institutions must rely on other granting agencies to fund oats research. Wiersma added: “But those requested projects may not align with local grower needs.”

Jochum said, however, he has hope for an incremental shift among some farmers toward oats. If Green Acres Milling is successful in achieving its goals, it would, he said, “add competition to the buyer’s side of the oat market—and that never hurts.”