Teff allows Wakool farmers to stand out

Diversifying was the motivation for the McNaul family, mixed farmers from Wakool, to start growing teff, an ancient grain originating in Ethiopia.

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Teff is billed as the smallest seed in the world and the cereal grain is gluten-free, catering for a growing market of consumers.

The McNaul family's involvement with teff goes well beyond simply growing the crop. They also sell teff-based products, including snack packs, muffin mixes and pasta, under their brands, Outback Harvest and Teff Tribe.

The family's next step is setting up their own processing facility, so they can complete every major stage of the process from paddock to plate themselves.

Fraser McNaul, who helps to run the farm and business alongside his parents, Shane and Lyn, and sister, Paige, said they started growing teff in the summer of 2014.

"We wanted to diversify our farm, we wanted to start value-adding and we needed a point of difference," Mr McNaul said.

"We did a lot of research into different grains, their health benefits, their growing climates.

"Teff was one we trialled and we found it loves our climate, tastes great and is a good all-rounder."

Although there is a lot of teff now grown for the horse fodder industry, few farmers are producing it for human consumption.

The crop fits into the McNaul's farming system, with a short growing season from around October to February/March.

Teff also requires less water than some other summer crops, such as rice, using six to seven megalitres a hectare.

Mr McNaul said another benefit was if you watered teff stubble after harvest it shoots again, providing a feed source for their ewes.

"That's handy because February/March is usually pretty dry and we would be starting to feed out."

However, given the size of the seed, establishment can be difficult, as can processing. "It's such a small seed that it needs speciality cleaning," Mr McNaul said.

He said processing teff themselves would improve their traceability and may even help bring down the price of the end product.

"We know that the price is quite prohibitive at the moment for food manufacturers, if we can get it down, hopefully that opens up the market and gives us bigger volumes," he said.

But one thing is for certain, the demand to know where food is coming from is only increasing. "Our 'Get in Touch' email is inundated with customers asking questions about how it was grown, where it was grown - any question about teff, we get asked it on a daily basis."

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