How to Grow Teff

Eragrostis tef · Also called: Tef, T'ef, Taf, Xaafii, Williams lovegrass, Annual bunch grass, Tef abesha

A dense bright green teff crop filling the foreground of a field in Oromia, Ethiopia, with very fine grass-like stems, and a village of thatched round houses with grazing animals and a shepherd on the rise behind.

Photo: Timothy A. Gonsalves, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Teff is Ethiopia's own cereal and it occupies more land there than any other crop. It is the grain of injera, the fermented flatbread eaten at almost every meal, and Ethiopia and Eritrea together grow virtually all of it, though it is now planted in the United States, Australia, India and the Netherlands for the market in grains that contain no gluten. What makes it worth growing where it is grown is toughness of an unusual kind: it stands both drought and waterlogging better than wheat or maize, which lets it produce on the heavy black cracking clays that flood in the rains and bake in the dry. Its straw is valued in its own right as cattle feed and for mixing into mud for building. And its great weakness is equally clear: the stems are so fine that a windy wet day can flatten a whole field.

Growing Teff, Stage by Stage

1. Get the land ready — This is the heaviest work in the crop: plough repeatedly until the seedbed is fine, then firm it.
2. Choose your seed and planting material — Pick a short-strawed kind if you can get one, because standing straw is worth more than tall straw on the ground.
3. Sow the seed — Broadcast thinly onto the surface and barely cover it, because the seed is too small to come up from any depth.
4. Water — Teff is grown on the rains and its advantage is that it survives both too little and too much.
5. Weed and feed carefully — Weeding is hard because the weeds are relatives, and feeding is light because feeding is what flattens the crop.
6. Heading and grain fill — A loose airy head opens above very fine stems, and from here the whole question is whether it stays upright.
7. Watch for trouble — Lodging is the main loss and is not a disease. After that it is rust and the weeds.
8. Harvest — Cut when the crop has yellowed and the grain is hard, and cut low, because the straw is worth real money.
9. Thresh, clean and store the grain — Thresh on a hard prepared floor, because teff grain and sand are the same size and cannot be separated.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you see: The crop lying flat across the field after wind or rain, heads on the soil, very slow to cut and shedding grain as you work.

It likely means: Lodging. Teff straw is extremely fine, and a tall well-fed crop cannot hold a filled head up through weather.

Do this: Choose short-strawed kinds bred to resist lodging, which is the single biggest gain available in this crop.

If you see: Seed sown onto a well-prepared field that came up thin and patchy, or barely at all, with bare ground between the plants.

It likely means: The seed was buried, or the seedbed was cloddy or loose. A grain a millimetre across cannot emerge from depth or from an air pocket.

Do this: Do not cover the seed with soil, and at most drag a light branch over it after broadcasting.

If you see: Grain that grits between the teeth when the injera is eaten, or that a buyer rejects for sand, although it looks clean.

It likely means: It touched bare soil. Teff grain and sand grains are almost the same size, so once mixed they cannot be separated.

Do this: Prepare a hard smooth clay threshing floor before harvest and sweep it immediately before use.

If you see: A field that thinned noticeably after weeding, with gaps where people worked and grass weeds still standing.

It likely means: The crop was pulled and the weeds were left. Teff's own relatives, the love grasses, are common weeds and look very like it when young.

Do this: Learn the difference from somebody experienced before weeding rather than after.

If you see: Grain on the ground under a standing crop and lighter heads than the field promised, after the crop stood past full ripeness.

It likely means: Shattering. Ripe teff sheds readily, especially in wind.

Do this: Harvest as soon as the crop is fully yellow and the grain is hard, rather than leaving it to dry further.

If you see: Rust-coloured powdery spots and streaks on the leaves, spreading in warm humid weather, with leaves drying early.

It likely means: A rust disease, which takes the leaves before the grain has finished filling.

Do this: Ask a licensed dealer which kinds carry resistance where you are, since that is the main defence.

If you see: Yellow dying patches in the lowest parts of the field after prolonged rain, although teff is meant to tolerate wet ground.

It likely means: Standing water rather than merely wet soil. Teff tolerates waterlogging better than wheat or maize, which is not the same as surviving a pond.

Do this: Cut drainage furrows across heavy fields before the rains rather than after the first flood.

Yield & Market Value

Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your grain is worth before you agree a price with anybody.

Remember It This Way

If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.

Plough it again. Teff needs the finest seedbed of any cereal.
Do not cover the seed. It is a millimetre across.
Firm the surface after sowing, by roller or by hoof.
Sow thin. A crowded crop grows tall and goes over.
Go easy on nitrogen. Feeding it is how you flatten it.
Short-strawed kinds stand up. That is the biggest gain there is.
Young teff looks like love grass. Judge by the pattern, not the leaf.
Cut when the whole field is yellow and the grain is hard.
Cut low. The straw is feed and it is building material.
Never let it touch bare soil. Grain and sand are the same size.

Test Yourself: Identification

What is this very fine bright green crop that looks more like a lawn than a cereal?

When is the crop ready to cut?

Why is this crop lying flat, and what does that cost?

Honest Limits of This Guide

Timings are given in days and seasons rather than in months, because teff is grown from lowland to highland across Ethiopia and Eritrea and sown according to the rains rather than the calendar. Your harvest comes when the field is yellow and the grain is hard.
Very little is registered for use on teff outside its main growing countries, and most grass herbicides would kill it along with its weedy relatives. This guide therefore concentrates on seedbed preparation, sowing rate, feeding and hand weeding, which are what a grower actually controls.
Which short-strawed kinds are available, and how well they stand, differ by country and by year. This guide says to ask a licensed dealer rather than naming kinds it cannot verify for your district.
A great deal of teff is grown for the household and eaten as injera rather than sold, so production and yield figures describe only part of the crop, and the straw's value appears in none of them.

Sources

GBIF Backbone Taxonomy species-match record for Eragrostis tef (Zuccagni) Trotter — Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Copenhagen (source)
EPPO Global Database — Eragrostis tef (EPPO code ERATF) — European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO), Paris (source)
FAOSTAT crops and livestock products — production data for cereals including teff — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)
Eragrostis tef (teff) — CABI Compendium datasheet — CABI, Wallingford (source)

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