Organic

[parsley]

Happy New Year everyone.

Been on the east coast of the good old USA. Good food and good people.

We went organic because we need to sell high priced grain into profitable markets. Markets that pay cash. Americans are the best to deal with in the world. Same language and linked transportation and borders. Great people.

We can not live like we want to, on the present conventional prices, I might add.

We sold brown flax in November for $23.50/bu. We augered it on the truck. Buyer paid cleaning and freight. Gold flax will sell for more.

We are not interested in "feeding the world". We have only three months to grow crops while many countries can grow grain year round.

Parsley

[dalek]

Tom4CWB: Being a computer science grad, I still keep up on some of the technology. They're fiddling with nanorobotics with the idea that they can build robots the size of insects so that you can scatter a handful of them into a field and they'll be programmed to recognize the difference between crop and weeds so they can cut off the weeds while leaving the desired plants to grow. They can work day and night through the whole growing season. Not being done on any scale with crops YET but with the advances they're making with nanotechnology in medicine, etc., it'll happen in my lifetime. Of course, I'm only 30.

[lakenheath]

Whe you guys say no-till, do you mean seeding with a disc opener or are you talking one pass seeding. I guess what I am asking is whether or not seeding with sweeps (like 11' sweep on 9' spacing) in considered no till.

[lakenheath]

As for the weed seeking robots. They may be developed some day, then bought up by a company like Monsanto for 10 times the value of the company that invented them, then the robots will be placed nicely on the R&D shelf.

[Vader]

tsk! tsk! lakenheath. Not another conspiracy theory!

I know many farmers are now firmly in the no-till camp. I swithched to no-till because my land started blowing so badly back in the mid-80's. I have been continuous cropping since then. I think that my soil organic matter is up and now even with spring and fall tillage I do not see any wind erosion.

I have gone out and repurchased a harrow packer like the one I traded. I bought a rod-weeder and a tandem disk. In place of chemicals I am now burning more diesel fuel. Hopefully one day soon I will be burning biodiesel.

My local co-op dealer tells me that he can bring in biodiesel from the states at $0.85 CDN landed. He says he won't have time to be blending come summer but when the temperature warms up I could burn 100% biodiesel. There should be a HUGE carbon credit for doing that!

[parsley]

The secret to growing organic crops is rotation, rotation, rotation. There are good rotations and bad ones.

But that is not a marketing topic.

In marketing, the closer the farmer is to the end user (the old 'field to table' notion) the better the money in my pocket.

The layers that separate the farmer from the the consumer, eat up the profits on most farms.

Organic farmers bank solid cash from marketing directly. That is why I am so keen to get that useless CWB layer OUT of organic wheat and barley marketing. The CWB is of no value to organic farmers.

Parsley

[silverback]

Vader,

Are you saying that you have now gone 100% organic?? How many tillage passes are you doing per year per field? Did you mean 2 plus seeding? In this area I am interested in one pass/year, if that can be accomplished and keeping weeds in check with a proper rotation that would be great. However, what rotation beats back quackgrass?? Summerfallow? Still wondering.

[lakenheath]

When does quackgrass emerge? How do you currently control it. We don't have it in our area.

[lakenheath]

Sorry to go off the marketing path. But the topic is hot right now. And it is somewhat marketing related (changing production methods to capture better markets and reduce overproduction).

[parsley]

silverback,
If you are "interested in one pass/year", then the development of a perennial wheat could solve your needs.

Parsley

[silverback]

Quackgrass is a perennial that grows by spreading roots and some by seed. It is best controlled by preharvest glyphos, but you never really get rid of it as it comes in from the edges every year. Once it gains a foothold it is very, very hard to eliminate without glyphos. Tillage just moves it around.

Are you saying you have never seen it?? If so, Lucky you.

[Jman]

lakenheath:

Lucky you...never to see quackgrass.

Organic growers who know how to fight this weed are truely "Agronomists". They could teach your local fly-by-night chemical rep salesmen a thing or two.

Agropyron repens, also known as "Quack grass" or "sudden field of fire" is a perennial that comes out of dormancy immediately in spring (one of the first green things on the field).

If you unfortunately cultivated in the previous fall, all you accomplished was choipping the rhizomes (underground stems) of the original parent plants and created a bunch of new individual plants that will also begin to laterally spread, eventually encompassing entire sections of your fields.
It's a nightmare, and worse than Canada Thistle (Cirsium arvense). If you farm in the drier areas of the prairies, a few discing passes (not cultivator) passes duting a fallow rotation will set it back for a few years. If you farm in the wetter part of the prairies, the discing passes, may just spread the weed even more.

I dont thing there is any commercial crop that can out-compete it. If somebody can find a good commercial use for the seed and fibre of this crop, many of us would be millionaires. That is until voluntary wheat and canola would over-take it (ha ha ha).