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.