By Jessica Domel
Field Editor
Too much rain. Not enough. One thing is certain about Texas weather. It’s never the same. And you can’t predict it.
For Texas farmers, the wrath or grace of Mother Nature means the difference between making money, breaking even and losing big.
Thankfully, for some farmers, there’s relief in the form of drought and heat resistant crops and new watering technologies.
For Chad Busse and his family, tiny, nearly microscopic sesame seeds, are the ticket.
It’s mainly about the money. It’s very easy to plant. It’s very easy to grow. We haven’t seen a whole lot of problems with pests. So there’s not a lot of money that goes into it, Busse said.
Busse is a fourth generation farmer who is planting sesame for a third season. He farms with his father, Gary, and an uncle and cousin in Lyford in the Rio Grande Valley. They grow grain sorghum, cotton on occasion and now, sesame.
The yields are pretty good, Busse said. I think this crop will go anywhere from 800-1,000 pounds per acre. A thousand pounds per acre is a bumper crop for Rio Grande Valley sesame.
Sesame grows to a tall, green plant with multiple stems producing multiple pods with hundreds of seeds. About 14 days before harvest, the crop is desiccated with Roundup to dry the plant and its pods so they open when harvested, releasing the seeds.
Busse’s sesame is grown through a contract with Sesaco whose sesame varieties allow farmers to mechanically harvest with a combine. The majority of the world still hand-picks sesame seeds.
Sesaco’s seeds, developed through traditional breeding practices, allow the sesame capsule to stay intact during the drying stage so it can be picked up by a combine.
Combining sesame is like combining water, Busse said. It will come out of any crack in the combine. There are special procedures that we do with our combines in order to get them tightened up, which includes a lot of silicone and a lot of gray tape.
According to Sesaco, their sesame is used as an ingredient in various aspects of baking, in producing sesame oil and can be processed into tahini, which is a sesame seed paste popular in Middle Eastern, Greek and other cuisines.
Sesame is traditionally planted in Busse’s area around the first of April; however, rainfall and wet fields this year caused farmers to delay planting until May. Sesame is typically harvested from the middle of July through August. This year, harvesters will hit the fields around the first of September.
Busse’s sesame is grown without irrigation like much of the sesame grown in Willacy County. Sesame is drought and heat tolerant, which allows the family the option not to water.
We’ve seen some bugs that have come in this past year that we’ve had to do a little bit of spraying, but all in all, it’s a very easy, drought-tolerant crop for the Rio Grande Valley, Busse said.
Busse is president of the Willacy County Farm Bureau. He follows in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who also served on the board for years.