In the early 2000s, the biodiesel sector was booming across the world and the US Government was fueling the industry with incentives and subsidies. This sparked farmer interest in different oilseeds, with canola being one of the most efficient crops for oil production.

During this time, several small-scale crushing plants started to pop up in Northwest Wisconsin, with the goal to supply the growing demand for biodiesel. This caused many local farmers to start growing canola in the area for the first time.

Different from the other main grain crops, the canola varieties available at that time were required to be swathed prior to harvest, requiring different equipment than the grain growers normally used. Despite the special equipment requirements, the growers that ventured into the relatively new crop reported satisfactory yields, and saw many benefits to their whole system by having canola in their rotations.

Unfortunately, the biodiesel boom didn’t last long. A few years later, those attractive incentives and subsidies were cut off and the local crushing plants were deactivated, causing canola production to completely disappear from the area in the last decade.

Fall Line recognizes the strong benefits that crop diversity can bring to our farms, so it’s a constant team effort to find solutions that can expand the crops we cultivate. We believe that having multiple viable options of crops is something that increases the resiliency of the local farming community as a whole, and we believe that increasing the resiliency of the communities that we are involved in is the most impactful way of adding value to our portfolio.

In 2019, Fall Line found that a large local crushing plant had been using canola for food oil production and was hauling most of the grains via railroad from Canada and the Dakotas. Scott Day and Thiago Lima recognized the opportunity and started working with the plant managers to supply the plant with locally produced canola.

The decade-long canola crop hiatus in Barron County was broken in the spring of 2020, when, in partnership with one of our local farmers, Eric and Michelle Weber, canola was once again being sowed in the county.

By this time, new genetics had been developed that brought great advantages to the crop, such as a new pod-shedding resistant variety. This created the possibility of straight combining the crop without the need for swathing first.

The hiatus also brought some drawbacks, like the lack of historic yields for crop insurance.

The lack of crop insurance during that first crop year was just one of many risks involved on the project, but the upside of the possibility of introducing a new viable crop in the area and the confidence on the partnership with our farmers involved on that project was enough to outweigh those risks.

The canola crop of 2020 was harvested in September and considered a total success. Yields exceeded underlined expectations. Despite all the volatility seen on the more common commodities like corn and soybeans, canola followed a vastly different trend and resulted in record prices during our harvest. Operations were also surprisingly simple, and the only necessary upgrade of equipment was the acquisition of a canola disk kit for the Weber’s soybean planter.

The future of farming in Northwest Wisconsin is extremely exciting, and we are looking forward for what challenges and victories the next growing season will bring.

Land Use Optimization

Crop Diversity