Organic question for Hobby etc.

[freewheat]

I have a piece of land that because of wet weather issues, was un able to be reached for nearly a decade. If I can gain access to it, would it be automatically certified if I went thru the process? I have not touched it for 8 or 9 years.

It grew up to grass. I was just wondering if it would be worth toying with as an idea. Work her up and throw some oats on there, or flax, or what crop?

It is nice, deep, rich soil beside a lake, secluded from any conventional land by trees and water.

Can I have a small portion of land certified, while I conventionally farm the rest? As I get more sheep, and need more hay, can I rotate out of hay and do a year or two of organic after the hay, but still be farming 90% conventionally?

Thanks!

[pourfarmer]

Yea that land would qualify as long as you were willing to sign a affidavit saying it received no inputs for the past 3 years.

They made some changes to the rules recently which states you need to certify the ground the year before you sell the crop production as organic. Ideally, I think they want you to certify it the year you 'plowdown' grass, hay, brush etc, keep it fallowed and then crop it the follow year.

You can run parallel production for a certain number of years but have to have a plan in place to transition the rest of the land into organic. Kind of stupid I know. I think a way around this may be to have your wife or other family member certifying the organic production, keep it separate from you. hmmm It throws up red flags when they see land being taken in and out of organic production so that may not work very well now that I think about it.

Hope that helps.

[ado089]

I just did 7 quarters of rented land. You'll need a pre-inspection 1 year before being certified.

[grefer]

It would be best to talk to a certifier but this is my take on it. The land would be eligible to be certified organic. They may want you to start the process the year before. I'm not sure. If you have land that is not certified organic and land that is certified you cannot have parallel production. Meaning if you were to grow oats on the certified land then you could not on the uncertified or vise versa. You do not to have to switch cold turkey but they do encourage you to have all your land in transition within 5 years. After all they want to see a commitment to being organic not just fair weather friends.

[ado089]

Sign the affidavit. Get it inspected and don't do parallel production of the same market classes. They asked me when I was switching the rest of the farm...I said never and they were fine with that. 1 hour of paper work, 2 hour inspection and 2 minor non compliance issues (missing a number on one bin and I had not notified the neighbors yet) My existing record keeping far exceeded the standards. It's not hard, just another IP program if you ask me.

[pourfarmer]

2 hour inspection? who are you certified with?

[ado089]

Pro cert. Granted it was just the pre-inspection but I was organized, the farm is organized. I told him about my education, consulting business and why I was taking the organic land on. Showed him my record keeping program that has geopspacial info from every field operation I've done in the last 5 years. By the time he left I pretty much had a job offer to become an inspector. Not onerous at all.

[pourfarmer]

Just out of curiosity, why did you decide to look at organic production?

[hobbyfrmr]

I'm late to the party!
Yes to all the above. I would go with Procert they are less expensive and a Sask /local company that understands sask farming issues.
Do not parallel production. That just complicates your life.
I would put in a whole farm plan first go around. It requires drawing maps of all your farmland., the acres , bluffs and water bodies etc. I after the first year you may find you like the ides of organic and fast track the rest of the farm, or not. Wean yourself in.

[bucket]

Hobby

Do you think one of these vertical tillage machines would work in organic production. Plow downs etc. Seed bed prep. Etc.

Just thinking.

[hobbyfrmr]

Aso, I too am curious. Originally in 2005 I changed over for the money. Then I liked it, then 2008 market crash no bid for a year, then recovery and I made it this far. So far so good.. I have some very smart, big farm (4000 -5000 acres) neighbours who went organic, made very good money. Bought 2 sets of new everything. In 2011, they sold their discs bought a new sprayer and went back to conventional farming. The other neighbor was president of organic chapter, real active, ltalked about how his wife and family were so happy he changed to organic. He bought one set of new everything, then planted the whole farm to canola and the following year rented out to a BTO. So everyone has their own values (cash!) and way in life.
I guess my thoughts are , we are fortunate to be able to choose how we want to farm and what to do with the land we control.. I know there is better money and far more productivity on a conventional farm, but im just not interested in being that type of farmer.

[pourfarmer]

From what I've seen those new vert tillage things would be the cats ass for organic production! speed up the tillage process, incorporate matter easily, chew through anything basically, plus they are very accurate on depth control which would be helpful if you only wanted to work the top inch of soil without disturbing anything else. I'll let you know in about 20 years when there's some old worn out ones on the market that I can afford.

[farmaholic]

It is interesting to see the (almost)lockstep decline in totals(of all receipts) and receipts of #1, then the increase of #2 and the marginal increase in #3 and Feed.

Going forward it will be interesting to see if there is a huge increase in (especially)#3 and Feed since there is supposedly allot of the Western Canadian crop that didn't make the top two grades.

I posted my specs on a different thread, I am not taking feed price for that wheat, one spec says it is but many others says it isn't!!!

Nice chart farming101

[ado089]

Real simple, being that I am just starting out with a touch too few acres and land is at a premium I can't be picky. A neighbor has land that at one point was certified but has been more or less abandoned for the last 3 years. The only way he would rent it to anyone was if they farmed it without chemical and fertilizer.I was up to the challenge and picked it up for a very decent crop share. So I get to expand my land base affordably and diversify my operation with little upfront cost and it's still way less work than getting cattle. Did soil tests on it and it's bagged though. I might just sow the whole thing to a pea oat mix or pea barley mix and harvest the best half, plow in the rest.

[ado089]

I'll be renting one this year for sure. First to bust up the sod lumps pre-seed then for plow down.