In the second installment of Agriland’s Organics Series, in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM), we focus on the organic tillage sector.
As input costs on conventional tillage farms increase, many farmers have considered the option of a partial conversion to organics.
Martin Bourke, an organic tillage specialist with Teagasc, spoke with Agriland about the opportunties and challenges this presents for farmers.
Tillage crops
In 2022, there was around 3,500ha of organic cereal crops being grown in Ireland, 70% of that would have been oats.
With the 2,000 additional farmers joining the Organic Farming Scheme (OFS) last year, this increased the organic tillage area by 600ha to 4,100ha.
Although figures are not yet available on the 1,000 farmers who joined the OFS in recent weeks, Martin Bourke estimates that the organic tillage area now stands at around 4,500ha.
Given that the average yield on an organic crop is about 4t/ha, the Teagasc specialist said this means Ireland is currently capable of producing somewhere around 18,000t of organic crops.
Similar to conventional feed, the shortfall in supply of organic feed will be met by imports, the cost of which spiked last year to between €800-1,000/t.
Bourke said the advice for all livestock-based systems, whether conventional or organic, is to maximise the use of grass to help reduce the amount of ration where possible.
Bourke estimates that there are around 250 organic tillage growers, most of whom are livestock farmers who also have a tillage enterprise. There are only around 25 or 30 stockless organic farmers focused solely on tillage.
He said that organic feed surveys carried out by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) give organic tillage growers the confidence to plant crops knowing that there will be a market for it.
The findings of the latest survey of over 900 organic farmers, published last week, showed that over 50,000t of organic feed is needed to meet requirements for next winter 2024/2025.
A popular option for organic livestock farmers is a combination crop of a legume and a grain crop, usually barley or oats mixed with peas.
Conversion
Bourke, who partially converted 75ac of his own family’s 500ac tillage farm in Co. Wicklow, said he can understand why conventional farmers are nervous about conversion.
“If you purely look at the financial side and the potential margin for organic tillage right now it’s extremely attractive. I would say it’s just fear of change or fear of not being able to control weeds is what is holding farmers back,” he said.
“There’s a phrase out there that says ‘it’s easier to convert the farm, it’s much harder to convert the farmer’, and that’s very true.
“I’m not going to force someone to go and do something they may be nervous of. But the approach I have certainly taken in the last 12 months in the job is I noticed quite a lot of farmers do buy into the idea of dipping their toe into the water and going for the partial conversion,” he said.
“They see it as diversifying the risk, so they’re not putting their entire farm into organic farming. It’s like another crop option in a way.
The key requirement that they must do is they can’t grow the same crop on the organic part of their farm as the conventional part of the farm in any given year.
“It’s not that inflexible, it’s actually very workable. We haven’t found it a real constraint because you have the flexibility then the following year maybe to flip flop the crops back.
“You could decide to grow spring oats organically this year, but maybe next year grow it conventionally on the other side of the farm, so long as they don’t clash in the same year, you’re fine,” Bourke added.
Tillage area
The Food Vision Tillage Group has been tasked with looking at ways to increase the national tillage area to 400,000ha.
However, given the current competition for land, particularly from the dairy sector as it adjusts to nitrates changes, this will prove to be a major challenge.
“Tillage farmers, in my opinion, they cannot afford to pay €400/ac, which is a common ‘[land rental] figure being bandied about these days,” Bourke added.
“No matter what system you’re in, conventional or organic, if the figures don’t stack up, they don’t stack up,” he said.
He said that the cost of production in conventional tillage has “become too expensive” and pressure on income will “focus the mind” of farmers.
“It became alarmingly expensive when Russia turned off the taps to the gas line. Then we had the invasion of Ukraine, which further exacerbated fertiliser prices. So it brought into focus very much the whole area of cost of production,” he said.
According to Bourke, the cost of producing an organic spring oats crop last year was less than half that of growing a conventional crop.
“A conventional spring oats crop was costing upwards just over €1,500/ha whereas it was only costing €700/ha to grow an organic oats crop. That’s a pretty huge difference,” he said.
“It’s nice to have then as well that little bonus in your back pocket of a cheque coming in the post for the Organic Farming Scheme at the end of the year,” he added.
A tillage payment on the OFS on 30ha is worth just over €51,000 over five years.
Contract growing template
Teagasc is currently developing a contract cropping template for the organic tillage sector which would provide guidance on quality and base price which can be adjusted by the parties depending on the spec of the crop.
“It’s to basically give an element of trust to the buyer and to the seller,” Bourke said.
He said this would build on the department’s Organic Trading Hub as a way to create connections between farmers.
“We’re working on a fair template now that we think will be a good thing so a tillage farmer can approach a livestock farmer with it and say ‘are you interested in me growing a crop on contract for you?'” he added.
The Organics Series running this week on Agriland includes interviews, a farm visit and a panel discussion in the Agriland studio. For more click here.