Organic works

[Partners]

It gets worse the longer it goes..1st yr organic was the best this guy had.
Cultivation only makes the thistles angry.

[Klause]

Oh here we go again someone's going to tell us all how to farm.

Wtf is your point Klause ppl have been farming organically for 1000s of years. This thread should be named "rotary dial phones work" or "a horse and buggy will get you to town"


No different than conventional farming there are good orgasmic farmers and poor ones. I chose to utilize technology on my farm for economic reasons.

No one's telling you how to farm... You can do as you wish.


Until the people through government tell you different.

You'd rather keep spraying every year for sclerotinia than innoculate the soil a few times and be rid of the disease permanently... That's your choice.


BTK works as well as coragen for killing Bertha's and armyworms... It's organic it's been around for ages... And it's non toxic to us but keep spraying decis and the like.


Summerfallowing and screwing up land isn't the point. Mulch works as well for killing weeds as herbicides sometimes better...

I didn't start this thread to tell anybody how to farm... It's a discussion. I had my doubts but spent a lot of time researching and trying things out... Hey to each their own. LOL

[danny W1M]

Klause, when you say "it works", does that mean,

A.) You can grow a clean crop?

or

B.) You can net more money per acre?

Are you spending more time in the field and on the land, than if you farmed it conventionally?

[fjlip]

Ive been renting "organic" land for five years. After 5 years of the best herbicides money can buy the thistles, wild mustard, buckwheat cleavers still flourish. The land is ruined no organic matter soil dead blown away. Best it has yielded is half my neighbouring land. Would take 50 years of expensive inputs to get it into shape. He offered to sell it this year. I would be crazy to offer anything. Renting it was an expensive lesson in the effect of badly managed organic farming practice.

Well a neighbour that TRIED organic for a few years, went back to conventional but had horrible crops, rented to a BTO. He hammered on all nutrients, sprayed the hell out of wall to wall dandelions this spring and direct seeded Invigor canola. He sprayed the right stuff at the right time and the crop is PHENOMINAL, 60 bu IF it does not freeze.

The weed seed bank must still be there but the Invigor has it choked for this year. Thistle seeds blew onto ours for years! Solid quack grass too. Tillage at 4mph dos nothing, just makes weeds mad!

[bgmb]

No one's telling you how to farm... You can do as you wish.


Until the people through government tell you different.

You'd rather keep spraying every year for sclerotinia than innoculate the soil a few times and be rid of the disease permanently... That's your choice.


BTK works as well as coragen for killing Bertha's and armyworms... It's organic it's been around for ages... And it's non toxic to us but keep spraying decis and the like.


Summerfallowing and screwing up land isn't the point. Mulch works as well for killing weeds as herbicides sometimes better...

I didn't start this thread to tell anybody how to farm... It's a discussion. I had my doubts but spent a lot of time researching and trying things out... Hey to each their own. LOL

Fair enough but to grow one decent organic crop or transition crop isn't that hard. I will be impressed if you could do that for 30 years and not have depleted soil.

Regardless I hope you spent as much time researching the economics as you did the economics. You are only going to get a crop every second year if you want to keep nitrogen fertility up and weeds down so your rent is now not 70 it's 140.

[Klause]

Fair enough but to grow one decent organic crop or transition crop isn't that hard. I will be impressed if you could do that for 30 years and not have depleted soil.

Regardless I hope you spent as much time researching the economics as you did the economics. You are only going to get a crop every second year if you want to keep nitrogen fertility up and weeds down so your rent is now not 70 it's 140.

Organic doesn't mean you quit using fertilizer. You use soft rock phos, elemental S... Humic in many cases adding a bunch of micros that you otherwise wouldn't.


Modern innoculant in pulses adds so much N that it'll grow another crop easily... We soil test every year our levels are way better than the conventional stuff.


Adding NH3 spraying 2 passes of fungicides and way too much gly isn't good for anything. I'm not sure I'd ever certify as modern chemistries still have a place but we really need to lessen our dependence on them in my opinion.


Consumer crazies aren't going away and as testing gets more stringent the MRLs will begin to drop.

We're already seeing it with sustainable ag production policies from some grain end users.

[Klause]

Klause, when you say "it works", does that mean,

A.) You can grow a clean crop?

or

B.) You can net more money per acre?

Are you spending more time in the field and on the land, than if you farmed it conventionally?

I'm saying the crop is clean, the yield will be there from the looks of it and there is no disease.

If it were fully organic the profit per acre would be silly good. Conventionally inputs are about 30% lower with the same well one more sprayer pass than the "regular" crop.

[Braveheart]

A trend I've noticed is that when people start thinking about bringing babies into the world suddenly organic makes more sense and GMOs are suddenly evil.

[northfarmer]

Klaus we are large scale commercial growers and I appreciate your posts and particularly this one.

It would be nice to see some longer and medium term trialing results of some of these approaches.

We have been zero tilling for over thirty years and follow sound agronomic rotations and have much less dependence on fungicides and insecticides as many around us and are constantly evaluating there use and do not conduct the blanket spray programs many around us have adopted.

Keep posting please.

[Horse]

When they outlaw gly because the of the miss use ,the bots can't farm without it we will watch the mighty fall . I will miss it because I use it to pre seed or spray out Hyland, but the public are starting to notice the use of spraying what are ripe crops and the grain cos are starting to put testing in place , what are you going to do with your bins full of infested grain, find another chemo that disguises roundup ?

[Klause]

I'd like to put the wheat in the bin before commenting too much to get a feel for quality yield etc.


I'm all for genetic engineering. Imagine if we could make all crops aleoleic like rye and clover... It would completely end the need for herbicides in crop.

Or the ability to fix N for all crops. The end of synthetic nitrogen...


Probably will never happen or if it does a chem company will buy the tech and bury it... Like the organic weed killer developed at the U of S a few years ago.

[Klause]

I'd like to put the wheat in the bin before commenting too much to get a feel for quality yield etc.


I'm all for genetic engineering. Imagine if we could make all crops aleoleic like rye and clover... It would completely end the need for herbicides in crop.

Or the ability to fix N for all crops. The end of synthetic nitrogen...


Probably will never happen or if it does a chem company will buy the tech and bury it... Like the organic weed killer developed at the U of S a few years ago.

Also want to add Mallee was out in the field with me... He could give you a 3rd party assessment of what it looks like so far.

[grassfarmer]

Awesome Klause, good luck with the direction you are going. Do you intend to introduce livestock at some point as that's a cog in the wheel of soil health too?

[farmaholic]

Also want to add Mallee was out in the field with me... He could give you a 3rd party assessment of what it looks like so far.

An assessment through beer googles doesn't count Klause. {;-)

[WiltonRanch]

Good husbandry is paramount conventional or organic. You can't replace p k or s from thin air. Organic matter is a nitrogen bank account and if you depleat it you won't get it back in your lifetime. I am interested in organic green manures to build om and choke weeds. I see a lot of push from the seed cos to market all these wonder cocktails to fix your soils. Guys around here are playing with them and they look promising. What worries me is guys are being led to believe they can plant these with no fert and either graze or harvest the forage off and presto the soil needs no fert the following year to grow a crop. Grazing wouldn't be a problem but removing forage is depleting the nutrients and om instead of building it.