Thursday 27 January 2011

They Didn't Teach Me That at College


I’ve just returned from the Organic Research Centre’s annual 2 day conference held near to my old Alma Mater, The Royal Agricultural College near Cirencester. It is a conference that I try to go to as it is always held in January, and at that time of year I usually have time for re-evaluation and consideration, and the conference is a great forum for new ideas and solutions.
Being so near to my former college where I learn’t about how to farm conventionally, I started to think about some of the questions that I have had to answer since I started farming organically that I had not been taught in the early 1980‘s.
Building fertility is possibly the biggest challenge to any stockless organic system. There are a myriad of nitrogen fixing plants to choose from out there, but which one will do best on your soil type? Should it be in the ground for 18 weeks or 18 months to provide the most fertility? Can it be under sown in a cereal crop or is it too competitive and will swamp your crop before harvest? How much nitrogen does it actually fix and how much is available to the following crop? How many following crops will that fertility ley support?
Phosphate is another worry. Like your Triple Super Phosphate, our Rock Phosphate comes from Morocco, but unlike yours, most of our phosphate is not available to the plant in the short term. So, what plants can you use as a green manure that make that applied phosphate or the unavailable phosphate that is in our East Anglian soils available? Do different varieties of wheat manage to make available more of the existing phosphate in our soils?  
As far as my college lecturers were concerned, weed control came out of a bottle, so having been used to jumping onto a sprayer to deal with a problem, keeping my farm rid of the nasties was another head scratcher. Having a proper rotation and drilling a bit later does help with some weeds, but the market around here is for wheat, barley and beans and you can’t leave autumn drilling too late on our heavy clay soil. I have invested a huge amount of time and money into novel forms of mechanical weed control and now all our crops are sown on wide spacings and are hoed with a laser guided hoe, which is drawn by a tractor with RTK guidance. For the last two years we have been working with a company to develop a mower that will cut the heads of wild oats and other competitive weeds before they seed in a standing crop.
So, there are solutions out there, but in the main the organic farmer has to solve many of the problems him/herself, as funding for research into organic farming systems is almost non existent. I remember coming out of lectures at The Royal Agricultural College weighed down with government funded research booklets on how to increase productivity using artificial fertilisers and pesticides. I often wonder what state our industry would be in today if the same amount of money had been invested in organic farming? They certainly wouldn’t have dumped all that sewage sludge in the North Sea.
Blog for National Farmers Union website - January 2011

The Axe of Decontrol


Having a muck out in the farm office is not something I look forward to. It is usually spurred on by recognition that the piles of papers on my desk are not only teetering, threatening daily collapse, but more importantly, may contain a frightening bit of DEFRA legislation that has been hiding in there for months with a due date looming large. However on this occasion the office cleansing was prompted by both printers breaking in one day. The oldest printer began to spit small metal cogs out with every page printed whilst the newer one was broken by me slamming the lid down having replaced the ink cartridges for the second time that week due to my children's occupation of printing out full colour pictures of their favourite fluffy animal of the day. 
So, two new printers arrived and space had to be made for the beasts, which involved desk tidying. Desk tidying inevitably involves a certain amount of filing, which in turn requires an amount of going through old files to make space for the new files. These all have to live in a filing cabinet that is so full that when the top draw is fully drawn out the whole thing lurches forward, momentarily threatening to chop your toes off. Note to self; buy steel capped boots for filing.
It was during the file cleansing operation that I came across an old Punch cartoon that I had saved when I had gone through my Grandfather’s desk when he died. The cartoon is dated June 15th 1921. The scene is of a farmer standing in a small copse. Having just taken off his jacket and hat, he is rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and is holding a large axe. There are three trees behind him all containing a legend. The first tree says “Guaranteed Price of Wheat” and the second tree says “State Control of Cultivation”, while the third tree, the tree that the farmer is squaring up to says, “Agricultural Wages Board”. Mr Punch, smartly dressed in a suit and trilby hat, has one hand protectively against the third tree and is pointing at the legend with his cane. Mr Punch is saying to the farmer “I’m all for the free use of that weapon of yours: but I should spare this tree. It’s worth keeping”. The cartoon is entitled “The Axe of Decontrol”.
Who knows why my grandfather kept the cartoon. Maybe he thought it was amusing?

Blog for the National Farmers Union - Originally published 15th December 2010

Welcome to Organic Farming - Suffolk Stockless Style


As this is my first blog for the NFU I thought it only fair to tell you a little bit about myself so that you can qualify any outlandish statements that might come from my two itchy typing fingers over the next 12 months. 
For example, any comments I might make about livestock farming can be taken with a pinch of salt, because I haven’t got any animals. “No Livestock on an organic farm?” I hear you cry, “surely with no muck, your whole system has to be based on mystery”. On many of the farm walks we have held, some might have arrived with that misconception, but hopefully by the time they have left the farm, they will have seen that we tackle stockless organics with a comparatively conventional and straightforward approach. 
As I no longer follow the traditional ‘East Anglian Cereal Barron’ three course rotation of winter wheat, winter wheat, winter cruise, any claims on my part about being able to compete with the likes of our own Barley Barron NFU President on his latest holiday on Queen Mary 2 amongst the Caribbean Islands, should be treated as unlikely as continuous cereal cropping on this farm. I favour a fertility building rotation which includes clovers, green manures, compost spreading and other nutrient building activities that you’ll all be doing when the oil runs out.
However, the reality is that like you, I am trying to make a living out of the business of farming, listening to my customers needs and providing them with a product that meets their requirements within the realms of good agricultural husbandry. I believe that conventional and organic (or should that be unconventional) farmers have a huge amount in common and an awful lot to learn from each other. There is no “I’m right and you’re wrong”. 
And the little bit about myself? I farm 700 hectares in Suffolk with a further 300 hectares under farm management contracts, all farmed organically, with 2 full time staff and 3 tractors. I’m married with 3 children, balding and play the bass guitar badly.

Blog for for the National Farmers Union - Originally published on 22nd November 2010