East of England Organic Group

Attended an interesting and informative event today which was disappointingly poorly attended.  The invitation was sent out to about 80 organic farmers in the Eastern Counties but only 6 attended.  It is always of interest to discuss the recent harvest, the organic market, general issues about the organic sector as well as enjoying good company.

So what did we learn?

1. That the market remains weak but this is only to be expected given the general economic situation and did not seem of significant concern to those attending.
2. That nitrates seems to be magically made by passing water through sand.
3. How to control creeping thistles in a cereal rotation.  (No I'm not going to reveal how as you should have been there).

The basis of the success of these events is getting informed, interested and interesting people to attend and that is easy - you each have to make sure you put the date in your diary when Ken Kelso sends out the date of the next meeting and then not think you have something more important to do!

Bulgarian Organic Cereal Area set to Increase

Bulgaria looks likely to remain an exporter of organic grains as they report an increase in their arable cropping area for 2010. The total organic area in 2009 was 12335 ha but with increasing interest in both cereal and wine production this looks set to grow. Owing to a lack of domestic processing most organic produce from Bulgaria is exported to Germany as commodities and consumer goods then imported .

Balkans.com Business News : Bulgaria's bio products market is dominated by imported foods

Looking with your eyes closed.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has not been a friend to the organic sector and it's recent rebuttal of criticism made by the Soil Association continues their antagonistic approach towards organic food.

Strange when it could be expected that the two would have a common goal: the quality of the food produced in the UK.

However the definition of quality is always the problem. The FSA take a very reductionist view of quality. For them if the matter can't be analysed to within an micrometre of its existence, they aren't interested. Conversely the claims made for organic food can be nebulous and too subjective to stand hard scrutiny.

Fortunately, the QULIF project, an EU project being co-ordinated at University of Newcastle by Carlo Leifert is starting to publish their findings. Scientifically robust, unlike somecalims made by organic advocates this work has should be taken very seriously. It has indicated that:

"organic food production methods resulted in

(a) higher levels of nutritionally desirable

compounds (e.g., vitamins/antioxidants and

poly-unsaturated fatty acids such as CLA and

omega-3) and (b) lower levels of nutritionally

undesirable compounds such as heavy

metals, mycotoxins, pesticide residues and

glyco-alkaloids in a range of crops and/or

milk.

Perhaps the FSA missed this long running EU funded study or perhaps they didn't look hard enough to find it.

Europeans remain uncertain about GM technology

The latest EU report shows EU citizens attitudes towards GM agriculture continue to be sceptical about the technology with supporters outnumbered by 3 to 1. It is seen as providing little benefit whilst there are safety concerns about its use. Interestingly, UK citizens show above average support.

Report available here

Every Food Purchase is a Vote

Americans are thinking about their Thanksgiving turkey. However with Christmas just a few weeks away should we not be considering what our Christmas turkey says about the agricultural system we want to see in the UK.  If so, shouldn't it be an organic turkey this Christmas?

Thanksgiving Turkey (see page 4)

US research which shows us the way perhaps?

Some interesting wheat breeding work going on in the US. A different approach from the Organic Research Centre population breeding work but with a similar hypothesis but perhaps with a more directly commercial approach.  It will be interesting to see whether any of the resulting varieties may be of direct interest to the UK or whether it is the methodology we should adopt to seek to develop more suitable varieties for organic systems our conditions.

 Also, they are exploring the potential for mechanical weed control with minimal soil disturbance which may be of relevance to those exploring non-inversion tillage systems.

 Drawing on the past for organic grains

Corn, SoyBeans, Wheat, Cotton, Organic Farming, Fertilizers | Agriculture.com

Mr Agnew's critical stance on organic systems and enthusiasm for GM technology (see below) failed to mention that some GM solutions available to US farmers are appear not to be providing the benefits originally envisaged. Weeds exhibiting resistance to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide are now being tackled by following an enhanced programme of treatment to prevent this resistance spreading to other fields and in order to encourage farmers to use this enhanced programme financial incentives are being paid.

Monsanto offers incentives to use Roundup Ready products

Fools we are not

Mr Stuart Agnew, MEP for the Eastern Counties, has expressed his views on organic farming and is clearly not impressed. I would ask Mr Agnew to take a more informed approach before dismissing organic farming by looking at some of the many highly successful organic systems that abound - many of which exist in his constituency.

Rather than being fools eastern counties organic farmers are resilient and innovative and producing high quality produce that isn't "submerged in thistles, plastered with fungus or crawling with aphids" as Mr Agnew suggests.

The likelihood of a crop having a high thistle population and high aphid numbers is low as flowering plants within the crop will attract the predator species which feed on the aphids. His comments sound more like ill-informed speculation than genuine observation.

Mr Agnew would be welcome to visit some organic farms in the eastern counties to discover the many benefits organic systems can deliver and why it is a farming system which should be taken seriously by policy makers and not dismissed as foolish.

'stop fooling around' Agnew tells committee