Organic dairy farming: a viable option?

Is it worth considering the organic option if you are a diary farmer? And if so, how does the day to day practice of farming differ from conventional farming?

First, the organic option for diary. The the formation of a new company for the organic dairy sector, called the Irish Organic Milk Producers (IOMP), will certainly help. From launching a new product range, to pooling resources and lobbying, the benefits of the company will be numerous.

IOMP has a current pool of 4 million litres of quota, rising to 6 million soon.

The freeing up of quota has increased the opportunities for the sector.

An issue however remains the stocking rates and housing differences between conventional and organic dairying: conventional farmers who have invested in high stocking numbers and specialised housing have already made serious commitments.

That said, according to Teagasc figures, the organic dairy sector is profitable. Whilst output is 8% higher on conventional diary farms, family farm income is 7% higher on organic dairy farms due to total costs being 16% lower.

These figures are explained by the fact that, while gross output, gross margins and overhead costs are all similar, direct costs are 708E per hectare on organic dairy farms, whilst the conventional equivalent is 923E per hectare.

Direct payments are also 12% higher on organic farms, which are also on average 1/3 larger. This compensates for the lower stocking rate organic farms must carry.

According to Teagasc statistics on winter milk, organic diary farms scored almost as well as the top 10% in the conventional diary sector.

Teagasc's James McDonnell: �There is an opportunity for conventional spring milk producers to switch to organic production and gain 10,000 gallons of quota to grow their business. �

He also points out that there is profitability potential due to the fact that conventional �milk prices are falling on the world market at present�.

John Liston farms 80 hectares near Croom in Limerick. He stocks both dairy cows and beef animals, and has a hectare of forestry. He converted to organic in December 06, and has sold milk to Glenisk since then.

John's 60 cows calve in July August. He carries the calves to yearling, with the males sold as year olds and the heifers sold to be put into calf. Some are also fattened for Jennings meats in Mayo. He has a 60,000 gallon quota.

Feed price and availability is an issue. At present, a local organic farmer, Harry O Grady, supplies oats. The establishment of the new IOMP is a great help, according to John, as organic dairy farmers can now pool resources, source inputs and increase efficiency.

He gives an example: �you can divide an artic load of feed between 2 or 3 farmers, so there's no half loads�.

�For me, converting was easy because I'd a small quota relative to the farm size� he tells me.

One of the biggest changes between organic and conventional is �that you don't have early grass. That's where you need extra silage. You have as much late on, but its tight in March April.� To this end, he planted red clover, �for quality of silage and yield� he tells me. With clover, John gets �three crops off one meadow, about 20 round bales per acre�.

Medically, John sometimes uses homeopathy for dosing calves. He also finds that putting calves under cows he has problems with can help.

In yield terms, the weather is always an issue. Simply put, the longer the animal stays on grass, the cheaper it is for John.

Compared to other sectors, diary can involve significant changes when converting to organic. All told however, it is certainly worth considering.

Global Seed Vault part 2: the critics

See here for part one: here
Not everyone is completely enamored with 'the Vault'. Dermot McKinney, project manager of the Irish Seed Savers: � its a very nice idea, but the only way to save the planet from disaster is to have seeds in people's hands, not in a vault north of Norway.�

Others working in third world development have also expressed similar concerns about about the emphasis on ex situ rather than in situ seed storage.

According to the Non Governmental Organisation Grain, there are, as they put it, faults with the Vault: [this is] �just the latest move in a wider strategy to make ex situ (off site) storage in seed banks the dominant � indeed, only � approach to crop diversity conservation. It gives a false sense of security in a world where the crop diversity present in the farmers' fields continues to be eroded and destroyed at an ever-increasing rate and contributes to the access problems that plague the international ex situ system.�

One practical concern expressed is the static nature of the vault. According to Dermot McKinney �storing seeds far into the future may be impractical. The seeds would be imprinted with the traits of now. They may not be viable�

So 'the Vault' is like a moment in time, a library where all the books are dated no later than 2009:

�Things change but these seeds won't. The climate will have changed. We use a 10 year rotation here at the Irish Seed Savers to deal with this in the real world�.

From a developing world perspective, the Vault can actually be seen as a moment of final theft:
�The system operates under the assumption that once the farmers' seeds enter a storage facility, they belong to someone else and negotiating intellectual property and other rights over them is the business of governments and the seed industry itself�, Grain claim.
As depositors are not allowed to put in seeds that are already stored in the Vault, first group in essentially claims ownership. So while the origin and subsequent generations of development of many food plant seeds occurred what is now modern day Iraq and Syria, farmers from these regions still growing food plants are disenfranchised from access to the Vault.

In a doomsday type situation, which is the function of the Vault, a minority of rich western nations and private corporations would thus own the world's seeds.

"This system forgets that farmers are the world's original, and ongoing, plant breeders,�� said Shalini Bhutani, GRAIN�s Asia Programme Officer, who is based in New Delhi.

Norway was chosen for its stability, and without doubt it is one of the world's most stable and indeed egalitarian nations. It also shows a strong commitment to environmental sustainability, and is supposed to be unlikely to suffer from natural disasters.

Eerily enough, Svalbard was at the centre of the biggest earthquake in Norway's history, measuring 6.5 on the Reciter scale in February 2008.

For their part, having invested so much of their own resources in the Vault, the Norwegian government are slightly bemused by the criticisms:

According to Jan Borring of the Department for International Cooperation in the Norwegian Ministry of Environment, a key issue is the fact that �storage space is not unlimited� and �most of this material will be generally available anyway� because of international trading rules and arrangements.

Crucially, the Seed Vault �is a duplicate facility, an extra layer of security, not a working seed bank as such, and even less a community seed bank that distributes seed directly to farmers or others� according to Borring.

Forward again to 2060. Would a raggle taggle band of scavengers get access to the seeds if they really needed them? How will power and politics play out in such a doomsday scenario? History and present realities can teach us, if we choose to listen to the lessons.

Global Seed Vault: part one (or, a tale of 77 euros and a doomsday scenario)

The year is 2060. The world as it was known no longer exists. Science and technology battle a surprisingly personalised Mother Nature. She is angry - very angry. The reason?

Global warming has really kicked in. There has been a sequence of catastrophes, one worse than the next. Storms stormed, wildfires raged, sea levels rose with polar melting. The great Siberian peat bog thaw of 2040 seems to have been a final feedback loop too far.

After that, the coastal cities were submerged and all was changed, changed utterly. Food shortages then famines, riots then wars, a Hobbesian war of all against all.

Humanity is now, in this year 2060, on the brink of the brink - just as Newton predicted in 1704. The weather is wild, the population ragged. Somehow, a crew is cobbled together on a voyage to the top of the world. Just south of the North Pole seems cruelly far to go for mere seeds, given the state of the planet, but that's where the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is.

Rewind to 2009, and even with modern communication and transport technology, an island 1000 km north of Norway in permafrost seems remote. The Global Seed Vault (GSV) is in Svalbard�s permafrost, just outside the town of Longyearbyen.

Owned by the Norwegian government, the GSV cost them nearly 6 million Euro (50 million NOK) to build.

The seeds will be stored over 100 metres into a the solid stone of an Arctic mountain, at a temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius.

The GSV itself is made up of three mountain halls. Each hall is around 1500 cubic metres in size That's 25 metres deep, 10 metres wide and 6 metres high.

This allows for storage space for 4.5 million seed samples, or 2 billion seeds. There are additional refrigeration units inside the mountain.

The initial shipments, packed in aluminium bags, placed in sealed boxes and shipped to Svalbard, totaled 268,000 distinct samples of seeds, weighing more than 10 tonnes.

These seeds may be retrieved from their frozen hibernation inside the mountains of Svalbard and be sent back to their original locations if needed. They remain the property of the donors, and are all duplicates of seeds saved and stored at locations around the world.

Even with a long term absence of electricity, duplicates of the world's agriculture crop collections will be safeguarded against possible future disasters such as wars and dangerous climate change.
According to the Global Crop Diversity Trust: �even in the worst-case scenarios of global warming, the vault rooms will remain naturally frozen for up to 200 years�.

While the construction of the seed vault and its ongoing maintenance is funded by the Norwegian government, the operation and management of the Seed Vault, as well as the transport of the seeds from developing countries is funded by the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust has raised 260 million US Dollars to conserve seeds. Current donors include governments, foundations, corporations and individuals. As of June 2009, these include companies such as DuPont and Syngenta, organisations such as the World Bank and seventeen governments. Largest Donors have been the UK, the US, Norway, Australia, Sweden, Brazil, Switzerland, Germany and Canada, with the Bill and Melina Gates Foundation being the other standout donor.

Almost two thirds of a million seeds from the reference collections of Teagasc and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (DAFF) were deposited in February. 677 unique accessions containing a total of 662,190 seeds were deposited.

According to DAFF �a selection of crop species uniquely associated with Ireland�s formal plant breeding programme, agricultural history and culture� was made.

The selections included named varieties produced by the State�s breeding stations over the past century and which were commercially successful, unnamed breeding lines from crop breeding programmes and material collected over the past 30 years by Irish crop breeders from the wild in Ireland.
The material selected �represents genetically diverse crop germplasm that may have a future agronomic value and play an important part in helping Irish agriculture adapt to future challenges such as climate change�, DAFF claimed when asked about the seeds chosen.

The seed selected came from two different seedbanks and consisted of three main crop types - forage grasses, potatoes and cereals. The first was the seedbank at the Teagasc Crops Research Centre, Oakpark, Co. Carlow, where the State�s forage grasses and potato seed collections are conserved and the second was the seedbank at DAFFs National Crop Variety Testing Centre, Backweston, Leixlip, Co. Kildare, where the main cereal seed collections for the State are held.

E77.12. That's how much it cost for the Irish government to make its deposit . This was the courier delivery cost to Oslo. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault administration covered the final leg of the journey's cost, and no delegation went.

According to the Minister of state Trevor Sargent TD, the GSV will help ensure �future crop diversity and promote global food security�. He also pointed to �the skill, dedication and hard work of the plant breeders in Ireland over our recent history�.

In marking the delivery to the GSV, the minister cited the past and the present. This included the Department's collection in Backweston, the Albert Agricultural College in Glasnevin, Dublin and the Crop Breeding programme in UCD �where most of the oats and wheat seed that make up the deposit were originally sourced�.

He also noted the contribution of Ireland's full national potato collection in the Tops Potato Centre in Raphoe, and seed sourced originally from the Malting Barley Breeding Programme in Ballinacurra, Co. Cork. The latter �like all the other cereal breeding programmes in Ireland has ceased operations but nevertheless some the most valuable crop germplasm from this and the other aforementioned breeding stations continues to be conserved and maintained in the Department's facilities in Backweston�.

He also highlighted the important work carried out by Teagasc, Oak Park and DAFF in maintaining these valuable reference seed collection, forage and potato breeding programmes
The Irish government have made an annual contribution of �1 million to the Trust from Irish Aid over the past 3 years.
Not everyone is completely enamored with 'the Vault'....
who?
and why?

Check the next posting.....

A Quarter Million Experimental "Frankentrees" to Be Grown in U.S

The USDA is currently taking public comments on whether or not the company ArborGen should be allowed to conduct 29 field trials of genetically engineered "cold tolerant" eucalyptus trees in the U.S. This massive experiment, which is on the verge of being green-lighted, will literally be using nature as the laboratory to test more than 260,000 �frankentrees�.

Scientists across the U.S. are voicing concerns over this proposal including:

-The USDA failed to do an Environmental Impact Statement to assess potential negative issues related to the proposed field trials.

-Studies have shown tree pollen can travel up to 1,000 kilometers. The spread of the these plants into the wild through seeds and plant matter is highly likely, and the impacts on native ecosystems from this invader are unknown.

-One of the experimental GE tree varieties is a known host for cryptococcus gatti, a fatal fungal pathogen whose spores cause meningitis in people and animals.

Comments are being accepted by the USDA until July 6, 2009.

Learn more and take action by Clicking Here

Organic Lamb: the issues according to John Brennan

Along with Beef, sheep makes up the biggest sector within Irish organic farming. This year, as in other years, most farmers opting to convert to organic before May 15th were either in sheep or beef.

While organic beef is relatively successful, organic lamb is far more challenging. In general, conventional lamb sales are down in Ireland, the UK and the rest of the EU, so both organic and conventional sheep farmers face challenges.

(pic: John Brennan - second from the end of the right, at BioFach with the heads of the five families...)

Some farmers who already have a low stocking rate seem happy to convert to organic and collect the improved supports, while still mostly selling into the conventional market.

John Brennan can claim expertise on three fronts. A farmer himself, he also heads the Leitrim Organic Farmers' Co-op, which has 150 members many of them with sheep. He is also completing an MA in Organic Agriculture, specialising in the organic lamb market for his research.

John suggests that �market conditions are difficult and producer sentiment poor�.

�The real issue is that organic lamb in Scotland is 4.51 Euros, whereas in Ireland it is 6 Euro per kilo. Add to this the fact that sterling is weaker and the production costs are lower over there.�

He goes on: �The Irish organic lamb market is about 11,000, whereas Scotland produces 100,000�. In both cases the primary market is the home market.

Inevitably, what holds for Scotland also holds for Northern Ireland with regard to sterling.

For his research, John Brennan surveyed 90 sheep farmers and interviewed a number of processors. He found that September is the biggest month for sales, with 33% of all sheep sold sold in this month. August clocks in at 11%, July 14%. So over half of all organic sheep sold are sold in this period.

�Seasonality is an issue for the rest of the year. This year we scraped through. If a processor said he wanted 40 extra lambs, it would have been difficult to establish.�

Regarding the market, Brennan points out that �there is a solid price for hoggets in the early part of the year, from January to May. Early lambs get a premium. However many of the September sales end up in the conventional market.�

Along with his survey research, Brennan understands the practical issues in securing sales. Marks and Spenser's (M&S) are the main outlet for Leitrim Co-op's organic lamb.

M&S have 27 stores in the south and 14 in Northern Ireland. �M&S want lambs from both north and south of border,� according to Brennan. This inevitably puts pressure on price.

A major issue for the organic lamb market in general is the retailer's cut. According to Brennan �I was talking to supermarket buyer who was taking a 50% mark up in lamb. I could not understand how the market could survive on this. When I asked him, he said that lamb was very profitable, but that he was selling very little because its too expensive. However, he seemed to prefer the good profit over increasing volume of sales�.

With consumers more price aware than ever, and more willing to bulk buy and fill the freezer, this sort of mark up is a barrier to increased sales.

Consumer education also needs to be improved, he suggests, as many consumers do not know how to cook lamb. Product differentiation for organic lamb too is a concern.

To try to secure foreign non-sterling markets, Brennan represented the Co-op as Slaney Meat's preferred supplier at the BioFach organic trade show in Germany this year.

One approach the Co-op are spearheading is direct sales. They have been instrumental in developing the mobile butcher units in the north west, and now have a simple but effective direct sales section on their website for consumers.

This section allows consumers to purchase half or whole spring lambs for the freezer. The meat is then brought to the selected farmers' market for collection. The market must be on at least five days after the order is made, to allow time for processing.

This provides the consumer with a genuine alternative to multiple retailers, provided they are willing and able to bulk buy.

Leitrim co-op: here

Vandana Shiva on the Future of Food & Seed

To me, seed is sacred. Vandana Shiva says, "Seed by its own nature creates abundance." She's one of my heroes. Watch this video and see why for yourself, and why she says "to save seed for the future is our highest ecological duty on earth".

She spoke in Portland at the Organicology Conference last February. Thanks to Tilth and the other wonderful organic companies and nonprofits who organized this gathering.

Web Video of the Week: A Silent Forest (full movie) - The Threat of Genetically Engineered Trees

Web Video of the Week: A Silent Forest (full movie) - The Threat of Genetically Engineered Trees

Like we didn't have enough to deal with already, we need to pay attention to this: Open nature is the testing ground and we are the guinea pigs. This is an award-winning documentary starring respected geneticist, David Suzuki. They're discussing the facts around "Frankentrees": Sterile trees (that means no pollen, no fruits, no seeds) that are also pesticides themselves (that means whatever feeds on the leaves etc. gets sick and dies), and are resistant to herbicides (or Roundup Ready as Monsanto calls it). Sound scary? It is. I was prompted to act in this way when I heard on NPR's show Marketplace, that Monsanto, as a sponsor, is now claiming to be a leader in Sustainable Agriculture! PLEASE! They fine farmers for saving their own seeds, and sue farmers for 'theft of intellectual property' if any of their 'patented' canola pollen (for example, Percy Schmeiser in Canada) is found on said organic farmers' land. They are now the largest seed monopoly in the world.
Vandana Shiva explains Monsanto's patented illogic and doublespeak in this video with eloquent detail.

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