US farmers advocate for increasing oat plantings

The area under oats is expected to increase by 1 million acres (405,000 hectares), representatives of the Oat Mafia movement in the United States announced, as reported by The Western Producer on March 7.

Martin Larsen, one of the founders of the informal Midwest farmers’ association “Oat Mafia,” said the movement is rapidly expanding. Farmers are exchanging information on oat cultivation and pooling their crops to facilitate sales.

Larsen is the driving force behind the revival of this “forgotten” crop in the United States. Currently, movement members are growing food oats on 6,000 acres (2,430 hectares). “Within 10 years, I intend to increase the area to a million hectares,” the farmer said.

In 2025, oats occupied 943,540 acres (381,837 hectares) in the United States. This is the lowest area since the peak of 40 million acres (16.19 million hectares) in 1930.

OatInformation President Randy Strichar admires Larsen’s tenacity but doesn’t believe a million-acre increase is possible. “If it were profitable to grow oats in the United States, they would be growing them. Our country is corn and soybean land,” Strichar said.

Profitability, subsidies, storage, and transportation options favor corn and soybean cultivation. The biofuel boom has dealt a significant blow to oat cultivation.

Farmers are adding oats to their crop rotations for environmental reasons. Larsen is convinced that oats reduce nitrate levels in groundwater after corn and soybeans. Farmers are experiencing difficulties with sales. Large processors are focusing on supplies from Canada.

Farmers have invested $20 million (1.6 billion rubles) in the construction of a $68 million (5.4 billion rubles) Green Acres Milling processing plant in Albert Lea, Minnesota.

The farmers’ optimism is based on a Fortune Business Insights forecast that the global oat milk substitute market will grow to $14.51 billion (1.15 trillion rubles) by 2034 from $3.98 billion (315 billion rubles) in 2025.

Tags: USA, oats