ULYSSES, Pa. — The 2018 Northeast Buckwheat Field Day will be held in Pennsylvania for the first time.
Anyone with experience or an interest in buckwheat is welcome to attend. It will be held at the Crowell farm in Ulysses Pennsylvania from 1 to 4 p.m. on Tuesday. There is no charge or preregistration.
With the current low commodity prices, buckwheat is financially competitive or even superior to the major grain crops, especially on the moderate-fertility ground that it prefers.
Demand for buckwheat is strong, driven by the large and growing demand for gluten-free foods. Buckwheat grain is surprisingly valuable in a healthy diet, counteracting many modern diet-related ills such as diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Much of the buckwheat eaten by Americans is raised right here in Pennsylvania and New York.
Despite this concentration of production, maintaining a community of successful buckwheat growers takes effort. The Northeast Buckwheat Growers Association was started with the intention of building that community. The annual field day is a particularly valuable gathering of people who have buckwheat growing in common.
Farmers are motivated to raise buckwheat for a wide variety of reasons. One motivation is that it requires close attention only twice during the year, at planting and harvest. People who enjoy farming but have other jobs or other summer activities find that buckwheat meets their needs well. Farmers who want to improve their tilth, reduce weeds or maintain a workable organic rotation often find a slot for buckwheat in their overall production plan.
Despite the relative simplicity of raising buckwheat, it requires considerable attention to detail. The annual field day is a great venue for discussing those details with other knowledgeable people.
This year’s field day will be held in Potter County on the Allegheny Plateau, where summer weather remains cool enough for buckwheat to thrive. The growing conditions there led the Allegheny Plateau to have vast acreage of buckwheat in the 19th century.
The program will be led by Cornell professor Thomas Bjorkman, with assistance from Penn State Extension Educator Nicole Santangelo, and hosted by grower Dave Crowell. Signs to the field day site will be posted in Ulysses. Topics will include fertility, field preparation, planting, crop development and harvest timing and technique. Mr. Crowell has a harvesting system that is serving him well.
— School of Integrative Plant Science
Cornell University