SASKATOON – The words may be heresy to his fellow organic farmers but Alvin Scheresky stands behind them.
After receiving a lifetime achievement award in June from the Canadian Health Food Association, Scheresky said his colleagues in organic farming can be too pure.
“Modern organic farmers have a closed mind to inputs.”
The Oxbow, Sask. farmer has gone without chemicals for more than 30 years. Now, reflecting on what he’s learned, Scheresky said organic farmers should be more open to improving their soil quality so it shows up in their product. He said organic farm soil is no better than on a conventional operation.
Read Also
U.S. government investigates high input costs
The USDA and DOJ are investigating high input costs, but nothing is happening in Canada.
“Thirty years ago my soil was better than it is now. I can tell by my crops now.”
It matters to him because “the organic industry is not going to survive because the prairie soil is not like a garden. We have a severe climate and the same problems as conventional farmers with weeds and loss of fertility.”
Scheresky maintains organic producers should use inputs or sow the land to grass and let it rest a few years.
“The conventional farmers have tools to fight weeds; the organic farmer has none. It’s discouraging them, it’s just too hard. If the price of wheat goes up too high, then they’ll leave” and start farming conventionally, Scheresky predicts.
Change needed
He pauses to say he is not slamming his fellow organic producers, but urging a course change to help them continue.
Scheresky first heard about organic farming during a lecture in 1953 at the Tennessee college where he was studying agriculture. He continued the interest while farming with his father in North Dakota. Then he got a chance to acquire land in Saskatchewan.
“Land was $20 an acre in the late Fifties. A person could be rich. I saw tremendous opportunity in Canada.”
He and his first wife moved north and farmed a big acreage conventionally. Once the land debt was paid, they went organic. In 1963 he had a crop of millet which he intended to sell but everyone asked him for flour and for other organic cereals, so he got a mill and began custom grinding.
The business grew slowly from many trips he made to Vancouver. Luckily there was a demand in the Sixties from all the young people flocking to the West Coast and demanding non-chemical food.
Scheresky also sold to individual retailers, health food stores and bakeries across the West. At the height of their operation the Schereskys had five mills and produced a semi-truck load every four or five weeks. They had three sections of land and grew millet, wheat, oats, barley, flax, lentils, peas and lesser known cereals such as triticale and kamut.
“That’s what developed the business – we had lots of variety.”
Over the border sales
Judy Harper, a wholesaler of Scheresky products, said: “No one else can mill quite like Alvin. We even ship his flour to the U.S.”
After his first wife died, he married Cleadith, a city girl from New Jersey. Alvin said she’s not a gardener but she loves the farm. Scheresky describes their farm as having productive dark brown soil in a flat landscape with groves of trees.
However, their children are not interested in farming. Now in partial retirement, the Schereskys farm only one section. But they won’t leave because they are attached to the farm.
And Alvin has a new goal. He wants to do some practical research for organic farmers since it’s not being done. He also wants to persuade the organic certification groups to members’ farms productive, they should permit a blend of organic and conventional techniques.
“What is wrong with technology if it can teach us something?”
Scheresky wants to give producers direction on how to change soil chemistry to produce better products while managing insect and weed problems without chemicals. He has done soil testing and read research papers and concludes every farmer would profit from adding more trace minerals.
Scheresky said organic crops generally yield less because of three factors: Weed competition, a lack of phosphate and low copper. He injects pellets of ground copper and cane sugar molasses into his soil. Similar work can be done to add iron and boron. Scheresky said organic crops are so low in phosphorus, even the Organic Crop Improvement Association approves of adding it. He has been a member of the group since it started 10 years ago.
Scheresky sounds more like a typical organic farmer when he adds that herbicides don’t work because the soil is getting out of balance. There are also some fertilizers he doesn’t use, such as anhydrous ammonia, because it “energizes the weeds, not the crop.”
