Making Organic Small Grains Work

For a lot of organic grain farmers, small grains like oats, rye, and wheat can be a great addition to a rotation: they are great for disrupting weed cycles, and provide a long fall window for establishing cover crops. The catch is that they only make sense to plant if they pay off. Although some Pennsylvania farmers are successfully growing small grains for niche markets, others have identified multiple barriers for consistently profitable small grain production. Addressing those barriers is at the heart of the Organic Rye, Oat, Wheat Systems (OROWS) project. It's a three-year project that started in 2025, funded by the USDA's Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative, and its goal is to explore multiple ways to improve small grain profitability for farmers across the Mid-Atlantic. The word "systems" matters here, because the team isn't just studying these crops on their own. They want to find better ways to fit them into organic grain rotation. 

OROWS is exploring profitability in various ways: what does it take to consistently grow food-grade grain? Is poultry feed a viable market for grain that doesn't meet food grade quality? What agronomic practices maximize yield and quality? To accomplish this, OROWS pulls together the laboratories of agronomy researchers Dr. Daniela Carrijo and Dr. John Wallace, food scientist Dr. Josephine Wee, and poultry scientist Dr. Dervan Bryan. The idea is to follow the grain all the way from the field to human and poultry nutrition. 

Another question the project is tackling is a practical one. What should a farmer plant after organic no-till soybean? Winter wheat has been a tough fit in past experiments. Soybeans often get harvested late in the fall, after the best window for wheat planting has passed, and no-till soybean can leave behind volunteer rye seeds that come up with the wheat and contaminate it. So, OROWS is testing spring oat instead, planted after both tilled and no-till soybean. So far, volunteer rye pressure has been very low in spring oat, and the team is evaluating whether oat can help with the additional weed pressure that tends to follow rotational no-till events. 

OROWS ultimately attempts to identify more options for farmers. When the project wraps up, the team hopes to give farmers a clear picture of their choices when it comes to adding small grains to a rotation.   

Preliminary results are due in early 2027, with final results coalescing in 2028. Ultimately, the project will deliver answers to questions, including: 

• What combination of variety, row spacing, and fertility gives the best yield, the best weed suppression, or the highest nutritional quality in organic hulless oats?  
• Does planting a mix of oat varieties fight disease better than a single variety?  
• Do different field practices actually change the nutritional quality of the grain? 
• Which organic grains and varieties are the best fit for poultry feed?