A grass known for its toughness has a weak spot in the seed marketplace. Orchardgrass contamination is a threat to Midwest fescue seed production.

Last year, at the Missouri Seedsmen's Association, fescue seed processors sat down for breakfast to talk about a troubling trend for Midwest fescue production. Their common concern was the state of fescue seed production and what has become an inherent and industry damaging level of orchardgrass contamination in harvested fescue seed. The processors agreed that buying stations should avoid purchase of fescue seed that contained 6 percent or more contamination of orchardgrass.

To understand the problem, it is important to know that the high-end market for fescue seed is based on the residential lawn market. It's a market in which a bag labeled K-31 fescue represents a well-known and proven product-a hearty, attractive and enduring turf seed. It's also important to know that to label a bag as K-31 in Missouri means that the product must be at least 95 percent pure fescue seed. Otherwise, the product must be labeled as a mixture of grass seed, which has less value among consumers. Other states have divergent but similar levels of purity for labeling. There's no way to separate orchardgrass from fescue seed at the seed house, thus seed brokers have few options but to control quality as seed dumps off the truck.

Once the kingpin of fescue production, lately, Missouri and her Midwest sister states have been upstaged by growers in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. There, in places like Oregon's Willamette Valley, fescue seed producers treat the grass like a true cash crop, growing it in rows with management and fertility geared toward seed production. They have the benefit of more rainfall and mild winters. The results are stands with admirably pure seed and high yield-reaching upwards of 2,000 pounds per acre. And increasingly, the region claims significant market share for seed production.

On the other hand, production in the Midwest is typically thought of as a bonus crop, at best something marginally managed for, at worst, an afterthought. Production here is based on a cattle industry that takes in great swaths of fescue pasture. When there is excess pasture, there is fescue seed. And of course in Missouri's hills, there is the otherwise idle fescue of waterways and grass-strip endrows.

University of Missouri forage specialist, Rob Kallenbach sees the fescue industry from both ends. He knows the plant's contribution to the cattle industry, and in that light, figures that it will be hard to change management style.

"If you think about it from an industry-wide perspective, you see pasture land as something with few other cropping options. It's in fescue and the seed is seen as a bonus crop. I can't think of any herbicide that takes orchardgrass out of fescue or any management practice that can be done differently to avoid orchardgrass seed in fescue. So given the fact that there aren't many ways to favor one over the other, we don't have any practical options to clean up the industry."

Plant manager at MFA's California, Mo. seed plant, Wayne Ogle said that word got out early about the more stringent buying criteria this year.

"When growers found out every buying station (all companies) was going to turn it away if it was too contaminated, there was a good reaction. Farmers cut fescue for hay if they thought it was too contaminated."

David Danker, ag division manager for Bucheit, Inc., saw the same reaction. He said representatives from that company tried to get notice out early and visit producers if possible to review the fields they planned to cut for seed. When stands were obviously high in orchardgrass, producers were discouraged from harvesting.

Danker said the irrefutable fact for Midwest fescue growers is that quality will dictate the future of the industry. Supply for fescue seed with high orchardgrass content outstrips demand. It's sold as mixed variety grass in the bag or bulk for roadways and highline cuts.

"But if we want to grow our market, we need to be able to ship 96 and 97 percent pure fescue. There just isn't much market for less than 95 purity," said Danker.

The answer for seed producers is maintenance. Producers need to take into account that to reach high seed yields, fields require investment in labor, fertility and weed control. Broadleaf invaders can be controlled with a range of herbicides. Orchardgrass, unfortunately, can't. High levels of orchardgrass call for complete renovation of fescue, a pricey and time-consuming enterprise.

However, Kallenbach says that maintaining quality fescue stands in the Midwest could be a profitable exercise.

"I think there is a great opportunity for Missouri to be a grass seed production center, a high quality seed producer with people who are willing to oblige the practices it takes to produce high quality and still get the grazing benefits from it.

"It will need to be part of a whole-farm system, with other acres that are dedicated for spring grazing and haying. I think you could fit it in neatly. I don't know if we'll be able to compete with the Pacific Northwest in a serious way just producing grass seed. But because we have a cattle industry that can benefit from it, we have some advantages. And since one of the largest markets is the expanding suburbia of the east and southeast, we have an advantage in freight, fescue seed being a bulky and expensive product to ship."

Kallenbach even envisions fescue as a row crop in the Midwest, with acres of rowed grass occupying typical row-crop ground-ground with deeper soils and better fertility than typical rough pasture. In fact, on the few farms that do row crop fescue in this area, yields of 1,000 pounds per acre aren't unrealistic. Compare that to an average, pasture-harvest fescue yield of about 250 to 300 pounds per acre.

"I think there is a good opportunity for particularly northern Missouri and parts of western and southern Missouri in bottoms and on the better ground where there are corn and soybeans rotations that could go to fescue for 3 or 4 years and then back into soybean and corn. I think it could be lucrative, particularly if we can produce quality seed that can bring some kind of premium," said Kallenbach.

Missouri produces between 70 to 150 million pounds of pure seed per year with prices that swing from the 18-to 20-cent range to 48 or 50 cents. That makes for a $20 to $50 million market. It is something that producers should be vigilant to protect, and certainly something with potential to grow.