Wally Hamm wants to dispel one of the biggest myths about transitioning from conventional to organic grain production.
Many farmers believe it requires three full years of adopting organic practices while receiving conventional prices for their crops.
“That continues to be a psychological obstacle to the transition process on the part of many, many conventional farmers,” said Hamm, who is the general manager of Pro-Cert Organic Systems.
He wants growers to understand it is a 36-month process that starts with the last application of pesticides and fertilizer on their last conventional crop.
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A farmer who sprayed his canola crop for the last time in July 2015 would receive conventional prices for the crops he produces in 2016 and 2017.
However, the transition period would end in July 2018, which means he would be eligible to receive organic premiums for the crop he harvests that year.
Hamm said the organic sector lost a lot of growers in the years following the 2008 global economic meltdown. Many consumers couldn’t afford to pay more to buy organic food.
Slumping demand pushed down organic prices at the same time conventional prices were on the rise. That had many farmers rethinking their choice to grow organic crops.
“There was a massive exodus,” he said.
But the demand for organic food has returned, and Hamm wants more growers to make the transition.
That is starting to happen, according to the latest statistics published by the Canada Organic Trade Association.
There were 1,281 organic field crop producers in the prairie region in 2014, an 11 percent increase from the previous year. But that is down from the 1,484 certified farms in 2008.
Hamm said it can be a tough sell to convince a conventional farmer who has many dollars invested in sprayers and bin space to make the transition.
“They are not mentally prepared to gear down to farm less land,” he said. “It’s like changing from being a Catholic to a Protestant.”
Hamm said the net returns during transition years are not as bad as many farmers believe.
He estimates that under the worst case scenario where yields are 60 to 70 percent of conventional yields, a farmer’s returns in the black soil zone would be $38 per acre less than his conventional counterpart.
But Hamm believes a more realistic yield is 80 percent of conventional especially during the first full year of transition because of the residual fertilizer in the soil and reduced weed competition from spraying the fields the previous year.
Under that scenario, the organic farmer’s returns would be $21 per acre higher than conventional due to input costs that are half as much as those paid by conventional growers.
Transition farmers are allowed to save seed for planting during subsequent organic years instead of buying high-priced organic seed. Incorporating the value of the saved seed into the equation results in an $86 per acre benefit for the organic grower.
Richard Gray, an agricultural economist at the University of Sask-atchewan, doesn’t have a problem with Hamm’s logic, but he thinks there are a couple of factors that may have been overlooked.
The first is that it is a whole new way of farming and mistakes could be made in those transition years.
“Organics is certainly a different system of management that requires a lot of learning,” he said.
The second is that the weather risk factor associated with all types of farming is higher for organic producers.
For instance, if it is a wet year and the grower can’t apply fungicide, there could be plenty of crop damage.
“There is a lot of tools in the conventional toolkit to handle various types of risk, and those aren’t at your disposal during those two years,” said Gray.
But he is not discouraging growers from considering the organic alternative.
“I’m not discounting the ability to make money from organic production. I think there might be some significant potential to make some money,” he said.
Hamm said the organic producers he knows are not concerned about competition from new growers making the transition.
“They’re more concerned about losing market share to Afghanistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, India and all the other ‘stans’ in Eastern Europe,” he said.
They’re also worried about losing organic elevators and buyers. There were 225 organic processors operating in the Prairie region in 2014, up 33 percent from the previous year.
