Why I am converting to organic
Last autumn, after two years of inflated input costs and significantly reduced farm payments, I look at converting to organic to see if it could add value to my farming system.
I’ve never been afraid to make adjustments to how I farm, but my initial concerns about converting were eased when I did a simple calculation of adding the Organic Farming Scheme (OFS) payments to the amount I was spending on fertiliser.
Then I asked myself: on a net profit per lamb basis, how many lambs would I need to sell to match the OFS payment and fertiliser costs?
Having seen how well multi-species swards performed under difficult circumstances last year, my plan is to incorporate more of them into the grazing platform, and to introduce red clover into the silage system.
Organic tillage is the enterprise that will see the biggest changes to how I’m operating, and keeping tillage in the system complements the cattle and sheep enterprises.
It will be two years before I receive full organic status, but I’m excited by the challenge. I expect a lot to change in the sector over the fiveyear term of the OFS.
Critics of the scheme have expressed the view that the numbers of farmers entering the scheme will slow down, but I think when more farmers do the maths, there will be a significant cohort who will make the switch to farm organically.
The CAP system that was in effect when I started farming is gone, and the high-input, high-output model that I strove to perfect needs to be re-evaluated on dry-stock and tillage farms. Retained profit is what matters, not production volumes.
In 2021, an estimated 15.9 million hectares (9.9pc) of agricultural land in the EU was being farmed organically. The Horizon Project Organic Targets4EU (2022-26) aims to reach 25pc by 2030.
Minister of State Pippa Hackett’s recent announcement of 1,050 new applicants being accepted into the OFS, will mean the number of organic farmers in Ireland will exceed 5,000 holdings, and 225,000ha.
Double
The total area farmed organically needs to double by 2030 to reach the government’s ambition of 10pc of utilisable agricultural area.
5,000 is a significant number. There are 7,000 farmers in Ireland availing of the Nitrates Derogation, and in September, Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue estimated that there were only 3,000 farmers operating between 220 and 250kg livestock manure nitrogen/ha.
The EU is certainly steering farmers towards organic. The latest CAP package has continued with the convergence model, and included extra environmental conditions.
Civil servants in the EU Commission get blamed for the unpopular parts of a CAP reform, while the politicians in the EU Parliament lay claim to the popular parts.
The reality is that the MEPs have the biggest effect on the direction of European agricultural policy, and farmers need to choose wisely when voting in the next EU elections.