What is innovation in farming, and how does organic fit in?

here's an article on innovation - the word, the preconceptions, and an alternative vision of it from a farming perspective

Innovation is a funny word. It conjures up images of science and technology, of the business �community�, of skyscrapers, microchips and power-suits, and perhaps most of all, of �going forward�.

Innovation can be seen as coming up with something new and useful, as a response to a specific set of circumstances. In business it can refer to the processes through which companies get to add value, and it is inherently connected to research and development.

If we apply innovation to food, we nearly always think of brave new worlds. In the past, it was tinned foods and margarine, DDT and Angel Dust. Today, it�s GM, molecular gastronomy and functional foods.

And yet, there are other ways to look at innovation and food, inspired and catalysed by the environmental challenges we face.

So is organic farming innovative? Coming up with a new, marketable, branded, certified product, more in tune with planetary needs and consumer preferences may well be seen as innovative. Food was going in a particular direction: industrialisaton farming and food was seemingly unstoppable, spurred on by cheap abundant oil and a range of synthetic inputs.

And then, along came organic food. People all over the world had started to realise that there was an environmental crises - in fact, there were various, sometimes interconnected crises. People wanted food to taste and be more natural. People wanted animal�s welfare to be taken more seriously.

Necessity bred ingenuity and food producers responded. Taking the best of the old along with plenty of the new, they began the long process of changing how food is.

Like all businesses, this had to be done with a value-adding aspect. Organic producers not only innovated in terms of what and how they produced, they innovated in distribution and in their own organisational structures, from box schemes to certification.

And still it goes on. Innovation seems to be in the high-end, cutting-edge, urban, industrial, business domain. And yet it carries on in fields on farms, far from the urban core.

An irony of innovation is that urban food preferences for more natural food have in part helped reshape the rural space, back away from the industrialised brink.

It is still the case, however, that innovation in food is seen in agri-industrial terms, by and large. Comparative funding figures and the front pages of the farming press all suggest as much.

Because of this, it was a surprise to see Offaly organic farmer Ralph Haslam on the front cover of the Farmers� Journal recently. The journal went, by it�s own front page description, from being �fearlessly on the farmers� side� to being �the voice of Ireland�s farming industry� a while back.

And yet there was Ralph, having received top prize at the JFC awards for innovation.

Ralph not only grows vegetables and produces award-winning cheeses under the Mossfield brand, he is building a dairy processing unit and biodigestor on his farm.

Ralph will spend the bones of �1 million on his new cheese and milk products plant, which will allow him to his own organic ice-cream.

And the biomass digestor is a great example of innovative business thinking. According to Ralph, �the digestor takes slurry and farmyard manure and is fed by microorganisms. These then convert the mix to a gas that runs a turbine which in turn generates electricity�

It can in fact, LPG-style, produce a BTL � biomas to liquid.

In a context where his 247 acre farm can clock up a fuel bill of �50-60000 per annum, any move towards powering anything on-site is most welcome

He found Eddie O� Neill (Teagasc Moorepark) very helpful with the plans, and indeed Pat Barry and the whole Organic Unit in general.

Ralph keeps on innovating � he�s moving from Freisen to Rotbunt cows: �They are hardy, grass based, dual purpose, and they give high protein and butterfat content in the milk� he tells me.

Putting it all together, and you have an organic farm with high levels of biodiversity, on the foothills of an ecopark, on an ecowalk trail, producing their own award-winning cheeses, building even bigger on-farm processing to add even more value and products, while converting slurry and farm yard manure to electricity. That�s innovation.

will this become the biggest organic farm in Europe?

In what will surely be a major boon for the organic sector in Ireland, one of the countries� largest farms has decided to begin the process of converting to organic. When conversion is complete, it will also be one of the biggest organic farms in Europe.

An Grianan, is a farm in a region of Donegal with the same name. Along with being massive, at almost 3,000 acres, it is also one of the most northerly farms in Ireland. It is nestled on the Inishowen peninsula�s coastline in Donegal, between the townlands of Burt, Bridgend and Burntfoot.

Unlike much of the county�s farmland, the farm, which is owned by Donegal Creameries, is relatively flat: 1800 acres of it was reclaimed from the sea.

This also makes it quite fertile, limey and sandy � �if you walk through, after it�s been ploughed, you can see the seashells� according to Gareth Whitmore of Donegal Creameries, who is managing this ambitious project.

500 acres of the farm is an important wildlife freshwater called Inch lake: it is the first landing spot for some migrating bird species.

The rest is farmed by a varying number of farmers who rent sections, mostly on a short-term lease - at present there are 20.

First up, I asked Gareth about his reasons for taking on such a large project: �farming is much the same as any other business: you need to have a point of difference. Grianan is a very special place, and the farm is too - it is very naturally fertile. We looked at various things, including oil seed rape and willow. But we thought that going organic was the best way to complement the farm. We�d feel that there is a growing need and desire out there amongst consumers�

According to Gareth, a combination of some research and a more general recognition of the fact that consumers are becoming ever more aware of what they are eating: �consumers know more and more about where their food comes from. We reckon that organic consumption will continue to rise over the next five to six years�.

Compared to conventional farming, Gareth feels that organic farming has a lot of growth potential at the moment: �organic production is coming up in demand. There seems to be less competition, as supply is coming from outside the country�.

He continues: Irish conventional produce compares favourably to our competitors� conventional produce, so home grown organic produce should be better quality than much of the available imported produce�

The plan is to convert the farm in phases, over the next five to six years. At the moment, 698 acres is in conversion, growing white and red clover to build up fertility.
At present, they are setting up an organic dairy with a local farmer on the farm.

Beef, sheep, root vegetables, barley and wheat are all possible for the future � �we�re not ruling anything in or out�.

The soil may make at least part of the enterprise particularly suitable for vegetables in general and root crops in particular.

They took advice from the relevant state players, who they found to be very helpful: �We talked to Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and Teagasc to start the process. �They have been very supportive from day one. Pat Barry, the national organic advisor from Teagasc was always there with info when I needed it. All of the advisors in all of the sectors vegetables, grains, cereal crops, dairy, were all very helpful�.

As this massive and productive farm goes through the process of conversion, the organic sector will surely feel the ripples reverberate down from the tip of the north west of the island. Literally any sector they choose to go into, indeed any related sector, will feel the effects.

Will an Grianan help sort out the organic tillage shortfall? Will it reduce the proportion of imported organic vegetables on sale in Ireland? Only time will tell.

But whatever it does, being an operation on the scale it�s on, we�ll notice it.

Science, farming and fossil fuels: An organic crop researcher talks about the science of farming

Dr. Charles Merfield, or �Merf� as the approachable New Zealander prefers to be called, is making waves across the Irish agricultural landscape at the moment. Merf works for Teagasc (Irish state's agri-advisory and research organisation) as an organic crop researcher, and is based in Johnstown Castle, Wexford, Ireland. Merf's own site, which carries info on his research, letters published in the farming press etc is here

Oliver Moore: First thing first Merf, tell me a little bit about yourself and your background - hw did a New Zealander end up as a researcher in Ireland?

Merf: My partner is a soil microbiologist and nitrogen specialist and was working for Teagasc in 2006 - I heard about the job when I came to visit her. It�s also the only job in organic cropping research I found in the EU - something I find rather odd considering the general enthusiasm for organics at the moment, so I am very glad I got the position.

Oliver Moore: Do you have any practical experience in farming?

My background is in commercial horticulture - I studied at Writtle College in the UK. I then had jobs managing organic horticultural farms in the UK and New Zealand. This has given me a really solid grounding in real farming and business - which I feel is an invaluable asset now I am mostly on the research side of the fence. I only have to think back to standing in a cold wet field harvesting vegetables to remind myself of farmer�s priorities. I find agricultural scientists that have come from purely academic backgrounds without farm experience are missing something, and ag science is poorer as a result.

Oliver Moore: Your perspective on where agriculture is going has been attracting a lot of attention recently, in both the farming press and at various agricultural events. Firstly, can you give me a brief historical perspective.

Merf: Since the beginning of agriculture until the enlightenment and the industrial revolution, agriculture has been firmly embedded in the carrying capacity of the local ecosystem in which it operated. Human history in that time is riddled with endless examples of human societies that exceeded the ecological carrying capacity of the land, thereby destroying it and themselves. This is a key theme in Tim Flannery�s �The Future Eaters�. Indeed it is difficult to think of any large civilisation that has not destroyed its resource base and therefore itself. One exception held up in organic circles are the ancient Chinese who farmed the same lands for millennia without loss of fertility or productivity, due to the constant recycling of all nutrients from animal, including human, manures back to the land.

For me there are two key changes that fundamentally altered this situation - science and fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are not just fuel but are the �feed stock� for most of the materials on which our modern lives depend. Anything you see around you that you cannot clearly see is made from biological material, for example a solid wood table, is almost certainly made �from� fossil fuel, mainly oil. Unfortunately practically everything in the modern world is made �with� oil or other fossil energy, even if it is of biological origin and not made �from� oil. In other words, the energy from fossil fuel was used in its manufacture. Fossil fuel therefore provides nearly all of the energy and �feed stock� for the modem world, materials that were previously provided almost exclusively by agriculture. I therefore think the term �fossil land� is a far more accurate and useful term than fossil fuel.

Oliver Moore: So what�s the problem with fossil fuel or fossil land dependence then?

Merf: Peak oil is the problem. Fossil fuels having been in common use for about 300 years, nearly eight generations. Fossil fuels are so �normal� that most people cannot, or maybe until the last couple of years, could not conceive that they would not last for ever. However, its very basic maths that if you have a finite resource and progressively use it up then at some stage you will of used half of it up, that is, peak supply, at some time use all of it up, and at some point in-between its scarcity will drive its cost so high it will in effect preclude its use for most purposes. Once it is gone, it is gone forever - at least in geological time scales.

From my perspective science and fossil land make an unholy alliance. Without fossil fuels, science and technology would have been forced to work within the ecological carrying capacity of the land, and when they tried to exceed it they would be been utterly rebuffed. The carrying capacity of land is no different to the productivity of a cow, say. You can�t keep milking a cow without feeding it and expect to get milk forever, but that is often the belief about ecosystems: you can�t milk an ecosystem forever without feeding it, i.e., replacing that which you remove from it, and expect it to last forever. Had there not been fossil fuel and society had hit the ecological wall, after a few crashes �science� should have figured out what was going on and figured out how to stay within the ecological carrying capacity.

However, modernity has effectively ignored the carrying capacity of its ecosystems by consuming fossil land, in the form of oil and coal. These replaced the nutrients and energy that had previously been produced by agriculture. I hope the term �consuming fossil land� or just �consuming land� gives some insight into how insane this is. No farmer in his right mind would allow the destruction of part of his or her fields with each harvest, but this is what we are in effect doing when we consume fossil fuels, that is, fossil land. Both land and fossil fuels are finite resources and if we destroy them it takes a very long time, millennia for soil, tens of millions of year for fossil fuels, to replace them.

We have therefore used fossil land to both boost our current agricultural land area, increasing its productivity while also directly using fossil land to feed, clothe and house ourselves. Indeed, there has been so much fossil land available we have used it to have one �huge consumerist party� that far exceeds what our agricultural land would of supported on its own.

Oliver Moore: Give me a specific example, Merf

Merf: A key example using fossil land to directly boost the effective agricultural land area is nitrogen fertilisers. These are made from and with the natural gas methane, mostly as the feed sock / raw material but about 10% or so as the energy source to drive the Haber�Bosch process. By applying N fertilisers we can increase crop yield, which in the case of pasture, means we can increase stocking density. However, this is an illusion. If a farm had to produce all of the methane and energy required to produce the nitrogen fertiliser it uses then its stocking rate would be far lower, due to the land area needed. I have yet to see an analysis of this but I bet that it would be possible to get a far higher stocking rate using legumes to produce the nitrogen than the Haber�Bosch process using farm produced methane and energy.

Oliver Moore: What does this kind of analysis mean for society�s ability to feed itself?

Merf: We need ten times the amount of agricultural land we have in Europe to supply our current energy needs. On top of this about 15% of oil is used as �feed stock� to make plastic and all the other materials we have substituted for biological materials such as wool, cotton, wood and so on. So at a rough estimate we may need 15 times our existing agricultural land area to meet our current energy and synthetic material consumption, oh and one existing land area to produce our food, plus half as much again if it�s to be done within ecological constraints. Even if the figures I use are out by a power of ten we are still in serious trouble.

Oliver Moore: In the short term, what will this mean for agriculture in Ireland?

There will come a point when rotations will have to come back into mainstream farming, as clover will prove to be a cheaper source of nitrogen that the current oil-based sources.

Poultry, as a non-ruminant, needs quite a considerable quantity of grain to perform. Free-range poultry can be fed on some grass, but not completely on grass. The same goes for pigs. Now, they can be fed on various fodder crops, but you won�t get the growth rates.

In organics, the two organic meat products that cost far higher for the consumer are pigs and poultry, because organic producers can�t substitute pasture in for grain. Organic beef has the lowest price premium, especially in places like Ireland where the production differences are small.

The pig and poultry producers just don�t have the same sorts of pasture options. Their animals are indoors all the time and fed highly concentrated, high energy rations. But the whole system is based on cheep feed.

The dairy guys can look at places like New Zealand, which has similarities to Ireland, and see how to maximise the use of grass. The obvious easy one is to start to introduce clover. Clover increases quality, digestibility, protein, you get free nitrogen fixation - it�s a puzzle as to why more non-organic farmers aren�t doing it!