Organic 2015 - Harvest is in But Where's the Beef?

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Organic 2015 - Harvest is in But Where's the Beef?

With the harvest in, I spoke with some organic tillage farmers about their crop yield and quality, as well as the price they get paid for it. As it happens, some of the beef producers had something to say too.

Kitty Colchester of Second Nature Oils, in Urlingford

Ben Colchester in Urlingford, Kilkenny: “We were happy with our harvest. The oats were clean and though they were harvested at 20% moisture our dryer brought them down to 15% at which point it was weighed as it went in arctics to Flahavans. It worked out at 2.15 tonnes per acre whereas we usually consider 2 to be about average. Most loads were 59 bushel weight with one load 59.5 so we were very happy with that.”

Colchester, farming organically since the 1970s, also grows oilseed rape:

“The oilseed rape gave an average green yield of a tonne to the acre, which is on par, but it was on the main dirtier than usual due to the cold spell in May when the rape stood still for a critical period of time. Also the combining was later than usual - for the same reason - resulting in high moisture.

Having cleaned and dried it we started pressing and I must say it has particularly good flavour this year.”

Shirley Ladd of Castletownroche, is certified organic for four years. She has ten acres of oats as well as. She doesn’t do moisture count or bushel weight as her oats are for animal feed. “We’d no major trouble with pests or weather. Our yield was two tonnes this year.”

James Kearney farms with his brother Thomas near Fermoy in Cork.

The Kearney’s grow seven acres of oats and stock cattle to finish. “We’d a very good harvest, it was the best in a long time. The yield was 2.75 tonne per acre, it was good last year too, at 2.5 tonnes per acre, but this year was better. We applied more farm yard manure. It all went to the tillage - last year it was divided up.

Moisture was 16.5%, bushel weight 51. We’re happy with both. Last year it was 55 and the moisture was the same.”

So far so good, but for James Kearney, the issue is the market: or, more specifically, getting products finished.

“We are getting E340 tonne this year for the oats. It didn’t sell last year, we had to keep it for feed.”
The problem with organic oats is that “you only get two or three good years out of every five”.
His cattle stock has been declining from 40 to 15 and now just five.

“We’d cattle booked in with the Good Herdsman six months before they were due to be killed in September. They rang two weeks before and said they didn’t have a market for them.”

“They were all the time advertising, but they wouldn’t kill: you could only get ones and twos killed. I had 40 last year, I had to sell 20 of them conventional. I only got a few of the coloured cattle - the charolais and limousin - killed, but it took a long time. So don’t have as many now, and I’m taking them to the conventional marts.

“I’m always reading about people coming in and joining organic, and on the farm walks, it’s all talk about price. And the price is good - 4.95 to 5e per kg - so when you get it you are happy. Price brings people into organic, but getting the animals killed is the problem”.

This is compounded by the fact that when he buys in, “its 2-300E more costly for weanlings than in conventional.”

Because of these factors, James Kearney is leaving the Organic Farming Scheme in December.
Whatever about the harvest and the price then, there has to be a market too.

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