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    Oats – for sustainable
    crop rotation
  • Oat_Field_Perspective_2020-(4).jpg
    Oats – for healthy
    crop rotations

A healthy superfood with a promising future!

It’s the ultimate trend cereal and has the image of a “superfood”: Demand for foodstuffs made with oats is booming. From a nutritional point of view, oats are rich in valuable vitamins and can help foster good health in humans – they’re high in fiber and their consumption has been shown to lower blood cholesterol and thus the risk of heart disease, according to the EU’s “Health Claims”*. Oat cultivation is gaining attractiveness for the farmer as the milling industry is intensely searching for regionally produced raw material. The sales opportunities for the millers are correspondingly great – the variety of products is growing beyond classic groats and flakes: Be it in cereal bars, oat drinks, or as a basis for meat substitute products, oats are now consumed in many innovative products.

*(Publications Office of the European Union: “COMMISSION REGULATION (EU) No. 432/2012”) EUR-Lex - 02012R0432-20210517
- EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)


Oats are a viable crop for the future that can help
make the rotations of intensive arable farming more diverse
and sustainable. Current nutritional trends will further
increase demand for this healthy cereal.
Nina Blijdorp, International Product Management for Oats and Peas at KWS

Healthy for humans and sustainable
for fields!

As a summer cereal, oats are an additional enrichment to the crop rotation. They can help reducing weed problems in wheat intensive growing systems and enrich the rotation as a recovery crop. Here are the positive properties of oats at a glance*:

  • Oats have the best weed suppression among all summer cereals, even when no chemical weed control is applied to the oat crop.

  • Oats are a recovery crop in tight, wheat-heavy cereal rotations. With their phytosanitary effect, they can suppress infection cycles of blackleg and eyespot and therefore have a high crop rotation value.

  • Oats have a powerful and strongly developed root system, which means they can acquire nutrients particularly well.

  • Oats are ecologically valuable! Hence there is less need to use fertilizers and pesticides than with other crops.

*(Source: Otte, Rauber, 2021: “Plädoyer für den Hafer” [“An Appeal for Oats”], Getreidemagazin, 6/21) Plädoyer für den Hafer (uni-goettingen.de)

The market for oats is growing!

  • Oats for human nutrition are bang on trend.

  • More and more mills are looking for
    local contract growers: increased payment possible if quality requirements
    are met.

  • Regional raw materials are increasingly in demand.

OATS

The area under cultivation Germany 2019 (ha)

126,000

The area under cultivation Germany 2021 (ha)

180,000
+40%

Increase in processing volume Germany

2008-2018
70%

Oats are the organic cereal of choice in Germany

> 1/3
of the total area

Area under cultivation of oats 2021 (ha)

107,000
France

Area under cultivation of oats 2021 (ha)

195,000
UK

KWS expands oats product portfolio

Oats play both parts: being more sustainable in agriculture and fueling the growth of sales markets in modern nutrition trends. KWS has been successful in breeding leading oat varieties for many years, with a focus on France. This led to the strategic decision to expand this breeding program to other focus markets, such as Germany and the UK. By expanding its product portfolio, KWS is ideally placed to meet growing demand.
According to a recent analysis by Reports and Data, the global oat milk market was worth around USD 3.68 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach USD 6.47 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of up to 7.2% forecast between 2021 and 2027.

All KWS cereals products
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Nina Blijdorp
Nina Blijdorp
KWS Product Manager for Peas and Oats
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