Camelina Sativa

Camelina (Camelina sativa), a member of the mustard family, is a summer annual oilseed plant. Leindotter, False flax and Gold of Pleasure are the popular common names for the crop.

Camelina is ideally adapted to cool arid climates; fitting between the longer season soybean producing areas and the canola producing moist fertile prairies of Canada. The crop was widely grown in Eastern Europe and Russia up to the early 1940's with some production lasting up to the 1950's. Camelina was replaced with the introduction and widespread use of oilseed canola.

Recent nutritional studies reveled the importance of omega-3 in animal health; canola has acceptable levels of omega-3(8%), while soy bean and corn oil have almost no omega-3, camelina and flax have nearly 40% omega-3. Unlike flax camelina oil is stable and palatable. Camelina produces soy meal quality meal and canola quality oil. Camelina meal will be used for special high omega feed for fish, poultry, beef and dairy cattle, hogs, goats and pets. Today Camelina is produced in Slovenia, Ukraine, China, Finland, Germany, Austria and the USA.

Our experience with Camelina has been very positive. Obtaining a 50 lb. bag from Montana we began by testing the moisture content of the seed. The test results showed that it was a little dry at 9% moisture content. Adding a bit of water and mixing it got the seed up to about 12 to 13% moisture content which is right about where you want it. Next we fired up our CLB-300 (3 ton/day) press and got started squeezing the seed. It ran great threw the press and quickly we were getting out oil and meal. Not being familiar with the seed we ran it threw twice just to see what kind of numbers we could get. Below are the test results we got back from Custom Dairy Services, Inc. They are a certified wet chemistry Lab in Lynden, WA.