diff --git a/datafusion/substrait/Cargo.toml b/datafusion/substrait/Cargo.toml
index 3a9dafc9c6036..3475f553fe454 100644
--- a/datafusion/substrait/Cargo.toml
+++ b/datafusion/substrait/Cargo.toml
@@ -36,3 +36,6 @@ object_store = "0.5.4"
 prost = "0.11"
 substrait = "0.6.0"
 tokio = "1.17"
+
+[features]
+protoc = ["substrait/protoc"]