In the year-to-year gamble with their crops, farmers win some
and lose some. But they
always learn something.

“I’d say this was a terrible year for growing canola,” said
John Woodruff, an
agronomist with the University of Georgia Extension
Service. “But we’ve gotten a lot of new
information about how the crop reacts under certain weather
conditions in Georgia.”

Woodruff, farmers and other UGA specialists and researchers
teamed up to learn about
growing canola. After more than five years of research, Georgia
farmers have planted the
crop commercially for about six years.

Farmers grow canola for its valuable seeds, which are crushed
for their oil. Prices
this year have topped $6 per bushel, and Woodruff expects prices
to rise slightly into
1997.

Light in color and flavor, canola oil is very low in
saturated fats and is
cholesterol-free. Many people now prefer it for cooking.

Canola meal, left after the seeds are crushed for oil,
provides an excellent protein
source for livestock.

“People around the world are virtually standing in line
to buy this crop," Woodruff said. "We’re working to
help Georgia farmers fill that market.”

Woodruff figures Georgia farmers could plant up to 200,000
acres to canola. Even
figuring conservatively, that could mean nearly $50 million to
the state economy every
year.

This year, though, that figure will be much less.

Unusually cold weather in December, February and March
damaged canola across the state.
The crop was particularly hard-hit between Statesboro and
Augusta.

Woodruff said many farmers lost their crops in a hard
December freeze, and many whose
fields survived then thought their crop was gone after early
March brought another deep
freeze.

“In most of the damaged fields, we estimated losses at
20 percent to 60 percent," he said. "But we saw some
fields with damage or loss
of 90 percent or more."

Some farmers decided to harrow up their fields and plant
another high-value crop. Corn,
small grains and cotton were all bringing high prices, and many
farmers chose to plant
them.

But since canola is fairly new to the Southeast, farmers and
researchers weren’t sure how or if it could
recover from such damage.

As it turns out, much of the canola wasn’t killed. It just
froze down to the ground. Certain varieties store
food in the plant’s roots and use it to recover from severe
damage, Woodruff said.

A”We’re seeing plants now that produced axillary stems at the
base of the
plant," he said. "Those stems then grew, flowered and
are now producing
harvestable seeds.”

The plants recovered well enough to produce 20 to 35 bushels
per acre (40 percent to 80
percent of a normal yield). The unusually cool March and April,
Woodruff said, helped the
plants rebound.

“This year taught us a lot about canola,” Woodruff said. “The
more we learn, the more
we have to base sound management and financial decisions on in
the future.”