Faba beans. Please inform me.

[WiltonRanch]

More guys around growing fabas. Talking with them. What I gather who get them in early enough are getting them off in decent time. I need another crop other than cereals and canola for my rotation.

[ajl]

How do you tell if the farm you are on is a seed farm? A: Fababeans. Problem with then is that the primary market is for seed, Next is crop insurance. Then you have two types: the zero tannin varieties like snowdrop which is for hog feed or tannin varieties like FB9-4 which is sold for human consumption primarily bought by Egypt. Bottom line is the market is small and variety specific so marketing is difficult. There is not one variety that is grown for both the human consumption and feed markets.

[furrowtickler]

Interesting crop , just not sure on the marketing side .
Neighbor had a great crop not far from my farm , 65 plus bus.
I have heard marketing them can be a challenge .
Would be nice to hear from guys how they are doing marketing fabas

[WiltonRanch]

That's what I wonder too is marketing. If it's like pigeons it could be up in the air.

[farmaholic]

WiltonRanch.... there is more than one pun in that statement.

[Lex]

They yielded well this year. 50 - 65 bu per acre. O&T feeds outside Regina is/was paying $6.50 a bushel. No nitrogen fertilizer required. And for every bushel of production you can expect about one pound of residual nitrogen.

Plant them as early as you like. They wont freeze. Easy to harvest straight cut or swathed. They are late to harvest. No matter how early you seed them. No trash to worry about for the next year.

They say they need a lot of water. Might be a problem if it ever gets dry again. Not an immediate concern.

[crusher]

Helped the neighbour combining fababeans on Saturday. Ground frozen, inch of snow. Was going 3.3 mph, haven't seen that for 2 months. Sample looked better than last year, though they will need some drying. What a treat compared to the canola, barley and wheat we've been doing. -20 today with a howling wind, I hope the combines are in the shed for good now. Make sure you have a solid marketing plan first.

[4GFarms]

I was looking at them also. What are guys using as weed control options?

[Jay-mo]

We grew faba beans in 2015. Seeded them in mid april. They handle a lot of cold weather early. I applied Authority/glyphosate post seeding. Then Odyssey Ultra in crop. Pretty happy with that, but a bit pricey.
Got hailed out 50% and yielded 35 bpa. They looked like they could have gone 70 before the hail.
A good crop to grow but marketing is the problem.
I eventually found a feed mill that wanted them.
I would find a buyer first, then grow them.