Whats your view on organic ag in western canada?

[sumdumguy]

Lower cancer rates - my eye!

[hedgehog]

i was an organic farmer till last year, but the organic market in the uk collapsed after the credit crunch and buyers became hard to find.
increasing weed problems coupled with deisel prices for ploughing led me to quit.
i couldnt survive at £60/t for normal wheat in 1999, so i went organic, and it kept my business alive till better prices returned.
i didnt feel at all uneasy at selling organic wheat for £8/bu or flax at £16/bu, spuds at £350/ton.
but the best bit was the power i had to negotiate a price with the buyer.

[newguy]

What I get a kick out of are some of the so called green thinking people feel food should not be made into feul do not realize the organic meal they just ate could have been a meal for 3 if it was produced in a zero till way. Was told once that organic farmers wanted a test to make sure grain was organic. Grain commission said impossible as what they wanted to test for could not be detected with exsisting technology.

[wd9]

They can test for pesticide residues tho.
About 3000 of them.

[sjc]

Who says in the near future we cannot have Organic GM crops? If a crop is developed to resist pests without the use of pesticides, could it not be considered organic?

We have always disassociated GM with organic but in my mind, it is possible that they could one day be associated with eachother. The definition of organic ag will change, as new technology is developed and adopted.

[Braveheart]

The organic farmers in our area relied so heavily on tillage that their fencelines and ditches started to look like the dirty thirties. They had a HUGE fuel bill for tillage. Totally unsustainable system done like that.

Their yields dropped every year as more and more nutrients were mined.

With the right rotations and proper nutrient management it should work. Like any other system, done wrong or poorly it is a disaster.

What I do appreciate about the successful organic farmers is that they listen well to their customers. A good lesson for all of us.

[charliep]

When you use the term GM, what do you mean? Most people think very specifically of transgenics or the insertion of a gene from another species. Biotechnology in general can likely be used to create opportunities for organic crops just the same as conventional. The link will be the better understanding of gene functions and the ability select for and even turn on/off specific functions that can make express themselves in different characturistics traits, agronomic factors or quality expression. Could even be something as simple as a hybrid (not GM by definition) that gets a early start and has hybrid vigor that competes with weeds better.

[bobofthenorth]

The main reason that transgenic or engineered species are unlikely to be developed for low yield agriculture is that there's not enough in it for big pharma to expend the development resources. Seed sales alone don't fund genetic engineering - its the seed/chemistry sales package that makes it all work. Not saying that's right - just the way it works.

[charliep]

How Canada in general and western Canada in particular develops the model for funding plant breeding/varietal development will be one of the most interesting questions/challenges on a go forward basis. Everyone ties plant breeding to agronomics/conventional agriculture but consumer traits/looking for other alternatives to deal with everyday agronomic issues are also important. The developing world I think will be a leader here - don't have the resources to go with our expensive chemical based solutions. Not a tree hunger/organic type but a recognition that one size does not fit all farmers and the need to do a variety of things.

[sjc]

My definition of GM is the same as yours Charlie. Because people generally feel that because GM involves manipulation, it is bad and somehow organic is better then that. I dont think the average person understands that you potentially could have GM and Organic crops. Which was the point I was trying to make

The two words have been disassociated when in fact, GM could potentially really help the organic producer as much or perhaps even more the a conventional grower in the near future as you mentioned.

If anyone thinks that Monsanto is getting rich selling chemistry they are mistaken. The future of agriculture is in technology not chemistry. We will still be spraying, but what we are spraying in 10 years is not going to be the same things as it is now. Whether we apply benefical insects to control pests or a polymer to make a resistant plant non resistant it is not going to be the same. Heck i saw a robot in Germany that took pictures of every plant of corn in a seed corn field, analysed it and then went back and removed any plant which had a different genotype. This was a 100 acre field! Too many of us get caught up in the way we do things now - just think what we have changed as farmers in the past 10 years. Change is happening even quicker now. We are just starting to see the new Ag revolution in my opinion and its pretty exciting.

The big pharm companies are not investing research dollars in traditional chemistry anymore - there research dollars are going into the seed and traits and technology. Sure they better produce us technology that pays the bills but that is what they are banking on - not chemical spray guys.

That why my view on Organic Ag is the way it is - I dont think in 10 years we wil be spraying crops for weeds like we do now. I think there will be so many traits and technologies coming that we may all one day be 'Organic' producers. It is just the crop we will be producing will be Genetically Modified as well. Maybe im wrong.