GENESEE, Idaho — Eric Odberg walked through his millet field on an autumn day.

The crop glowed a golden bronze in the late afternoon sun.

Odberg had planted the millet in June and would harvest it in October.

“What I really like about the crop is you can seed it later,” he said. “The main thing is not to seed it before Mother’s Day. You don’t want to seed it too early, it doesn’t like that. It can freeze out. Put it in cold, wet soil, it just sits there.”

Odberg raised the millet on 5 acres as part of a Washington State University field trial. He and others in the industry are betting that food-quality millet will benefit Northwest wheat farmers as a rotation crop.

“Except for the occasional year where we just get absolutely no summer rains, I think it could do all right here on the Palouse,” Odberg said.

Millet worldwide

Millet, a crop rarely grown in the Pacific Northwest, is getting its chance to shine worldwide. The United Nations has declared 2023 the International Year of Millets.

The government of India proposed the international marketing year to elevate the importance of millets for food security and nutrition. The U.N. wants to inspire farmers and researchers to improve the production and quality of millets.

Millets were among the first plants to be domesticated 10,000 years ago at the dawn of agriculture. They are known for their high nutritional content and have been a staple for hundreds of millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia for seven millennia.

“However, their cultivation is declining in many countries, and their potential to address climate change and food security is not being realized in full,” according to the U.N. announcement. “This is despite the fact that millets can grow on relatively poor soils and under adverse and arid conditions, with comparatively fewer inputs than other cereals.”

Uniquely situated

Joni Kindwall-Moore is co-founder of the North American Millets Alliance, a think tank and advocacy group. She recently spoke about millets in food systems during the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization’s World Food Forum.

“Millets are uniquely situated to be a stable crop for a warming planet,” Kindwall-Moore said.

As summers in some regions become warmer and drier, proso millet — the species of millet that has the most potential in the Pacific Northwest — could become an important rotation crop, she said.

Because of its short growing period, farmers can plant it in harvested fields as late as July and still produce a crop with little or no rainfall.

“This is significant, especially in areas where the common practice is to harvest, till and leave the ground bare for months until winter wheat is planted,” Kindwall-Moore said. “This is a very vulnerable time for soil erosion by wind and rain.”

Proso millet helps protect that topsoil against erosion while sequestering carbon during the warmest, driest months of the year.

“When I look at the long-term climate models for our region, we can see where some of our farmlands may become too dry to farm conventional crops,” she said. “We should not allow these areas to go to fallow. Crops like millets can provide an alternative way to produce food, and keep the land covered and safe from desertification.”

Kindwall-Moore is also founder of Snacktivist Foods in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The food brand is developing “leading-edge” baking mixes and “better-for-you” baked goods using ancient grains.

She’s working with WSU specialty crop breeder Kevin Murphy’s Sustainable Seed Systems Laboratory to develop millet varieties for the region.

The lab needs market partners that can help build demand, she said. For example, Snacktivist can provide buckwheat pancake mix and millet focaccia bread to consumers, school districts and restaurants.

Millets have “superfood status” and “remarkable” nutritional attributes, high in minerals, vitamins and micronutrients, she said. They have a lower glycemic index, making them a good source of carbohydrates for people who are managing diabetes or prediabetes.

“They can be cooked like rice as a whole grain or used in their floured form and mixed with other ingredients to make familiar foods like breads, cookies and other grain-based foods,” Kindwall-Moore said. “Some entrepreneurs are making plant-based milks, yogurts and cheeses out of millets that have exceptional calcium levels.”

Millet research

Odberg is one of five farmers raising millet for WSU’s researchers.

Only a few have harvested millet for grain in the past, graduate student Tayler Reinman said. More have grown it as a cover crop.

Each of the millets is a different species, which “for better or worse” share a common name: millet. Proso millet is not closely related to finger millet, pearl millet or other species, said Murphy, the specialty crop breeder.

Many of the other varieties are longer-season millets and typically don’t mature in time in Northwest trials, Murphy said.

“Proso millet has always been by far the highest yielding of the millets we’ve tested…,” he said.

The researchers are also studying best management practices.

“There has been very little breeding for this crop in the U.S, and the lines that have bred are targeted for growing conditions in the Midwest — Nebraska and Colorado,” Reinman said. “Our first question is just around how these varieties perform in our region.”

About 1,000 farms produced 14.5 million bushels of millet on 421,000 acres, according to the 2017 USDA Ag Census.

As a short-season summer grass, proso millet would fill a “unique” niche in crop rotations, she said. It matures in 60 to 100 days, so it can be used to replace summer fallow or to save a failed winter crop.

Benefits include:

• It outcompetes weeds.

• It is highly drought-tolerant.

• It is processed using grain equipment already accessible to many producers, Reinman said.

• It is nutritious and gluten-free.

But there are production factors to consider.

Odberg had to spray his test plots with glyphosate several weeks before harvest to allow the millet to dry.

“We’re just not set up here in the Pacific Northwest to handle high-moisture grain, there’s no drying systems,” he said.

Millet also must be dehulled to be eaten, Reinman said. The region doesn’t have any dehulling capacity, which is an obstacle when attempting to connect farmers to processors who want to integrate regionally grown grain into their products.

Millet used for malting and brewing does not have to be dehulled. It is a common ingredient in gluten-free beer, Reinman said.

There’s not currently a certified gluten-free malting facility in the Northwest, Reinman said, but there’s a facility that produces malt for non-certified gluten-free beer.

“It takes several years to obtain a gluten-free certification, so in the meantime some brewers are trusting the maltsters’ gluten-free practices to be up to par,” she said.

An official certification would open up malt companies to a wider market of brewers who require it, she said.

It all comes down to a single question: “If all of the infrastructure is in place, are there ample buyers for the crop that make growing it worthwhile?” Reinman asked.

Works in rotation

“What really makes it work is rotation,” said Odberg, the farmer. “One thing in the Palouse, we have a pretty good rotation, but we need more.”

Millet is a warm-season grass, which is not grown on the Palouse. Corn is another warm-season grass, but would require more water, Odberg noted.

Last year, he planted 90 acres, his largest millet production to date, but it failed due to drought.

While it doesn’t need a lot of water, “it needs a few summer shots of rain, which, last year, we didn’t get any,” Odberg said. “So it turned into a cover crop. But I seeded winter wheat into it, and it was the best winter wheat that I’ve had.”

Crops following millet perform well, Odberg said. He usually places it in the spring grain portion of his four-year crop rotation of winter wheat-spring grain-canola-pulse crops.

Spring grain is the weak link in the rotation for weed control and production, Odberg said.

When he raises millet, the yield is fairly steady, about a ton per acre, Odberg said.

“That’s what I like about millet — it’s consistent,” he said.

Finding markets

Currently the biggest regional buyer is Global Harvest Foods, which uses the millet for birdseed. The Spokane company declined to comment for this story.

Five years ago, Odeberg planned to sell a 50-acre field of millet to a malting company as a gluten-free malt. The company switched gears, so Odberg went back to the birdseed market.

Odberg would like to be able to sell directly to food customers, with birdseed as a backup option.

“I think it’d be really cool if we can connect with a malting company, brewers, bakeries,” Odberg said. “It doesn’t seem like the gluten-free thing is going away.”

He originally raised millet as part of a project with Shepherd’s Grain, the farmer-owned cooperative, in an effort to develop a market for the crop.

The lack of gluten-free malting facilities in the region made it not feasible, CEO Jeremy Bunch said.

“The millet would have had to go from Eric Odberg’s to Colorado and then back to Seattle, and that just didn’t make any sense,” he said.

The co-op ultimately decided its energies were best spent focusing on wheat flour, and not trying to create processing and marketing for other crops, Bunch said.

But the company promotes research to advance millet production, and helps growers source seed or find markets.

“It’s not the most profitable crop, but it does play a role agronomically for weed control and that sort of thing,” Bunch said.

Bunch particularly recommends millet for farmers dealing with herbicide-resistant weeds. That resistance develops because some farmers use the same herbicides every year at the same time, Bunch said.

Millet breaks up the cycle and allows for herbicide applications later in the year.

“Really, a lot of the millet fields that I’ve seen in the region are very clean because the millet just outcompetes weeds,” he said.

Price varies

The price of proso or white millet ranged from 15 to 18 cents per pound as of Dec. 15.

The price fluctuates, Odberg said. He’s sold millet for as low as 6 cents per pound, and as high as 22 cents per pound. If it was consistently 22 cents, “it would be a viable crop,” he said.

“Typically, millet sells at a very low price for nine out of 10 years, and then one year, it’s a really good price,” Bunch said. “A lot of the big millet producers in South Dakota or Colorado, they will just hold the millet in the bins for multiple years until the price comes up.”

Outlook for the crop

Odberg plans to continue raising millet for WSU’s research. He hopes to plant a larger field come spring.

“I gave this a fair amount of attention, but when you have a full field, at least 50 acres, you’re going to give more attention,” he said. “Especially if the price stays up.”

From this year’s trial, Odberg figures he’s got enough seed to plant 160 acres next year.

He’s also been in contact with several breweries in western Washington that offer gluten-free malting.

Odberg welcomes the extra attention the U.N.’s marketing year will bring the high-protein, gluten-free grain.

“It has wide adaptation across the globe … (and) really has a fit for all diets and markets, especially in developing nations,” he said. “But it has potential here, too.”

The North American Millets Alliance holds its first webinar Jan. 17 at 1 p.m. Pacific Time.

Rob Myers, Director of the Center for Regenerative Agriculture at the University of Missouri, and David Brenner, Millet Curator for the National Plant Germplasm System, will provide an introductory tour highlighting the fascinating diversity of millets from around the world, including their role in food systems today and future prospects.

Webinars will be held the third Tuesday of every month.

https://millets2023.space/