organic tillage in Ireland part 2: brian o regan

Organic tillage in Ireland has a lot of potential but few practitioners, despite supportive rule changes and a strong market.

One man who took the plunge recently is Brian O' Regan of Kinsale. Brian farms 100 acres of tillage. Depending upon the year and rotation, he grows oats, triticale, beans and wheat.

�I was conventional in 2005, but, after the sprays and fertilizers, there was noting out of it� he tells me. �I was always interested in organic. I'd look at the market and it seemed like there was a market for it. An issue at the time was that there was no organic cereal for sale. It was mostly for home use.�

Brian mentioned the importance of visiting other tillage farmers who were already organic. He cites Ben Colchester's farm near Urlingford in Kilkenny as being especially influential for him.

1st November 2006 was Brian's starting date, so on 1st November 2008 he was fully certified organic.

A bonus for those considering converting is the fact that after one year, in-conversion to organic tillage fetches almost the same price as fully certified organic, as it is usable by fully certified organic farmers.

�I was lucky in that in the 1st year of my conversion, conventional prices were high anyway, at 200e a tonne.�

Presently, Brian is achieving more than twice the conventional price. However the yield is half the conventional yield, so input costs, or the lack of them, really matter.

And as is with so many other organic farmers, both economics and other factors were motivators:

�Handling so many chemicals and fertilizers can't be too good for you, but it�s also about the bottom line. I was spending a lot of chemicals. If the year was good, you'd survive, but in a poor year you'd be left with a big bill� he points out.

Although he only stopped spraying and using synthetic fertilizers in late 2006, already, Brian has noticed a difference in the land:

�It�s only now that you'd start to notice the changes. There are more worms on the ground and the ditches are different now too. You don't have as many weeds growing out of them without the fertilizer. The normal herbage does grow, but none of the clumps of nettles you'd see elsewhere are growing there now�

I asked Brian about a hot topic amongst organic tillage growers - the feed holiday story that is doing the rounds in the UK.

This story suggests that because feed prices are so high and the UK market retracting, the UK�s biggest organic certifier, the Soil Association, are asking the competent authorities to weaken the rules on what can be fed to organic animals.

In the not too distant past, sheep and cattle could be fed a non-organic component.

It is worth pointing out that the Soil Association denies even making this request: they instead point to the need for a debate on how best to keep people farming organically, or as close to organically as possible in the current economic situation.

Understandably, Brian is against any watering down of the feed rules: �you are either organic or you�re not. If they started to let in a 10-15% bovine ration, it would kill organic cereal growing in Ireland - that's all they'd be fed, outside of grass. The feed mills would run it to the max - business is business, so they'd push it�.

He also points out that it would be bad for the consumer, �as they'd be unsure of what they're getting�.

Considering all the effort that's gone into getting tillage farmers to convert to organic, Brian claims that increasing the conventional component would slow down the rate of conversions to organic.

Another issue is the fact that in the event of a product recall, as happened with pig meat recently, organic farmers with a conventional component are exposed.

Every farmer in every sector has issues: the price they get, the money they spend, as well as non-economic considerations. Organic tillage, all told, may offer more opportunities than most.