Features
Improving Supports For Organic Farmers
You can almost feel the warm air of the IMF on the shoulders of each and every government department. Agriculture is no exception. In this context, how targeted, co-ordinated and successful are the supports and measures the organic sector receives, and how could they be improved?
What Do We Have?
Currently there are four Teagasc organic advisors supported by an Organic Unit of the Department. Occasional events and conferences are held, and occasional newsletters published, where research by the advisors and others is presented. For farmers joining the Organic Farming Scheme (OFS) there are about 19 organic demonstration farm walks, and a compulsory 5 day course. The latter was only introduced in recent years, and also involves writing a compulsory farm business plan. NOTS, the National Organic Training Skillsnet, offers various, mostly one day courses.
Then there are discussion groups and producer groups. Individual sectors within organic, most notably horticulture, also organise for study trips to individual holdings to learn about specifics, such as making compost teas. The sector also has FETAC level five courses in Organic Horticulture and a new MSc in Organic Horticultural Crop Production has been announced in Cork.
IOFGA has this magazine and certification news, while the Organic Trust have Clover magazine. All of this then means that there are significant gaps out there. There is no degree level course available in Ireland for organic farmers. And there certainly is nothing approaching the BETTER farms initiative.
BETTER Farms and Herdplus
While some of the component parts of the BETTER farms initiative are already present in the Organic Sector, BETTER farms is a good example of joined up thinking. BETTER is an acronym for Business, Environment and Technology through Training, Extension and Research.
It has three essential components:
- Research demonstration farms under the control of applied research staff and are based at research centres or colleges. The most recent research knowledge is applied to the farming systems operated on these farms. The benefit in terms of efficiency, practicality and profitability to the total system is measured, evaluated and demonstrated.
- Better Farms: Well managed commercial farms where research recommendations are applied to the main farming system and the results measured and demonstrated at local level. The outcome and benefits of the research is evaluated in terms of practicality, impact on efficiency and improvement in profitability. The results are benchmarked against the research demonstration farms, other BETTER Farms and farms in the National Farm Survey. The results from these farms are published and demonstrated at regular farm walks and demonstrations.
- Discussion groups, where like-minded farmers who wish to develop or expand their enterprises come together on a regular basis on the farms of the members of the groups. The members share critical performance information on all of their farms and the performance of the farm being visited is discussed and evaluated by the members attending.
For farmer clients who are not group members, the regular demonstrations and farm walks on the Research Demonstration and BETTER Farms provide an opportunity to see the research results/new practices in operation. The financial impact of the adoption of these practices and recommendations is also made available.
Improved outputs are core to the BETTER farms programmes. In beef, for example, breeding, grassland management, performance monitoring to achieve key performance indicators, routine media reporting and technology transfer are all involved. ICBF (Irish Cattle Breeders Federation) technology and data are used to improve performance, with supports from Teagasc, FBD and the Irish Farmers Journal. This runs over a period of three monitored years. Increasing stocking rates through breeding and animal management efficiencies, including optimum grassland utilization and use of financial indicators, has been a central part of this.
The ICBF's HerdPlus breeding information service provides a range of farm management aids including EBI reports, Eurostar reports, breeding charts, fertility reports, calving reports, slaughter reports, suckler cow reports, inbreeding reports and personalised recording notebooks to farmers.
The cost of this service is €60 per herd per year for herds receiving breeding information products from ICBF electronically and €120 for herds receiving the products from ICBF by post. There is an introductory offer whereby this information is just €20 for Electronic in year 1.
Even Better Than The Real Thing?
There are many measures already available to organic farmers. Organic cattle marts, AI companies, the suckler welfare scheme, the beef processing factories all take information, from sire to slaughter age, weight to price. It is just not being differentiated for use by the organic farmer as of yet. It would be relatively easy to add an organic 'box to tick' for the ICBF with this information that is already being recorded in any event.
But a co-ordinated series of improvements could be made from grass sward to consumer benchmarking, encompassing all relevant aspects in between. Differentiation from conventional to achieve and justify a price premium could be done, especially in the areas of grasses and meat traits.
With the rules on forage levels in organic, the measuring of organic meat for traces of grasses and good fats could be done. With this in mind, metrics on the best possible performance for the British and Irish breeds might benefit organic especially. Scientific testing of the meat's traits, to show up grass feeding and omega three to six ratios is completely doable scientifically. Consumer panels for taste qualities or carbon footprint measurement could also be done.
In any case, this is just the start of a conversation, a conversation that might run on these pages in a regularised fashion.
Gillian Westbrook has been appointed to the new position of
General Manager with IOFGA. Coming from a background in the regulatory area...
I teach organic horticulture to adults and secondary schools and run a herb farm. I always read the farmers journal and I think it is a great idea to start this with organic growers and farmers.
Apart from that I have been trying to set up something like that for horticultural teachers, but most of us teach for VEC's and they won't even give contact details of other teachers to contact them. Yes this is needed, keep going, there is so much to learn and discuss, get it out there, no hiding.
I will give ye the courtesy of a response.
All I’ll say is great to be comparing the phytochemical content of Organic versus Conventional Fruit and Vegetables and comparison of Phytochemical in different varieties.
I agree its good work.
But.
Why is the National Organic Sector not exploiting its Food Safety Aspects in terms of zero Herbicide and Pesticide Residues as supported by the Department of Agriculture Residues Monitoring Database?
Let's settle this debate for once and for all.
In the interest of Irish Organic Growers, can we have a strong robust voice on this matter.
Also it would be appropriate to promote an awareness (educate) of the resulting Health and Safety Benefits of Organic Farming based on this data to Organic Farmers, so that they in turn can inform their customers.
I'd appreciate ye'er comments.
Francis Beechinor