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Shift
to organics natural step
by
Sandra Taylor
Categories: Livestock;Farm Management;
Publication: Country-Wide Southern;
Date: 2006-10-16
North
Canterbury farmers Phil and Viv Gray
switched to full organic certification in 2005 when conventional
methods
stopped working for them.
The couple
had been using holistic farming principles
in their 327ha farm business since 2001, but wished to capture the
organic
premiums available for their products available through certification.
They said
the shift to certification in December 2005
was a natural progression in their sheep and beef operation.
“We didn’t
have a philosophical bent towards farming
organically, we just thought why not reap the benefits of farming in a
more
natural way,” says Phil.
The move
paid off as they sold their finished lambs at
$4.90/kg CW. This season it will be $6/kg.
The lambs
are finished to between 13.3-20.5kg CW
depending on the market. The EU will take lambs up to 20.5kg CW and
will allow
one chemical drench, while the US takes lambs up to 15kg CW but will
not
tolerate any chemical treatments.
Therefore
any lambs that are drenched are carefully
tagged and recorded to fulfill particular market requirements.
Last
season all the lambs were sold to Alliance, but
Phil says they are spoilt for choice as far as processors go, as all of
them
were looking for organic lambs.
The move
to farming in a holistic manner came as a
result of their conventional farming system failing them.
Phil says
pushing his farm too hard meant he didn’t so
much step off the conventional system but was chucked off it.
Throughout
the late 1990s Phil and Viv were running a
highly productive flock of predominately Coopworth ewes, achieving
lambing
percentages of between 140%-148%.
They were
applying capital fertiliser to drive the
Olsen P levels up, as well as using urea to push grass growth.
In 2000,
the lambing percentages dropped to 125%, a
hiccup they put down to the dry conditions, but the following year the
whole
system crashed.
The
lambing percentage dropped to100%, they couldn’t
fatten lambs, the ewes wouldn’t graze and just too many ewes were sick
or
dying.
Fortunately
for Phil and Viv this all happened when
product prices were high and this allowed them to stay in business, but
something obviously had to change.
Phil had
been looking at holistic grazing management
prior to 2000, and the management system seemed a sound alternative
when
conventional farming methods had stopped working for them.
He says
they used the holistic system to take stock of
what had happened to them, and think about ways to move forward.
They
enlisted the help of Dr Jim Bruce-Smith, an
expert on trace elements to find out what was going wrong on their
rolling
downland farm.
They also
took the opportunity to look at other
operations that had adopted holistic farming methods.
George
Shuttleworth at Wakefield was one farmer who
told the same story of conventional farming systems failing them. His
farming
operation proved to be an inspiration to the couple.
“Things
had got out of balance, we were chasing Olsen
Ps and teetering on the edge with our trace elements” says Phil.
So they
begun the process of building up their soils
with calcium, copper, magnesium, zinc, boron using Lake Grasmere salt
and
Probitas soil conditioner.
Phil says
they have just finished going over the whole
farm with Probitas and will continue over the whole farm every 2-3
years, or as
cash flow allows.
What they
are aiming to do is activate the microbes in
the soil to encourage nutrient cycling, a system that should in time be
self-regulating.
They have
already noticed a big increase in earthworm
populations, where they once struggled to find half a dozen worms on a
spade,
they now find over 40.
Phil
believes they got themselves into a situation
where they had excess phosphate in the system, and they have had to
correct it,
although it will be a long-term process.
He says
while they still have excess phosphate on some
areas of the farm, in other areas it has stopped becoming a limiting
factor and
they will keep an eye on these areas as to when to resume applications.
To measure
trace elements in the soil, soil samples
are sent to the Brookside laboratory in the USA, and decisions around
what
minerals and what quantities to apply are based on these results.
The focus
has been restoring the health of the soil,
because once that is in place everything else will fall into line,
including
pasture and stock health.
To improve
pasture quality the Grays have been
renovating pastures by direct drilling or broadcasting mixtures based
on herbs
and bromes including red clover, timothy and plantain.
Phil says
they have struggled with problems associated
with high endophyte ryegrasses in the past, and are looking forward to
progressing on without these grasses.
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