GLENLEA, Man. – Organic farmers don’t consider themselves to be part of a flaky, feel-good movement.
For them, organic farming is an alternative form of agriculture that needs to be done efficiently, professionally and for a profit.
“I’m with the real world,” said Gilles Cop of Redvers, Sask., during a recent tour of the University of Manitoba’s research farm near Glenlea.
“I’ve got to have a bottom line out of this to make it pay.”
That’s why organic farmers on the tour were delighted to hear that of four rotations studied at the farm, the one that most consistently proved itself to be profitable was organic.
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But it’s a weird one – alfalfa-alfalfa-wheat-flax.
Over the 12 years of this study, that rotation has been more profitable than a similarly integrated rotation using chemicals and two grain-only rotations: one organic and one conventional.
And that doesn’t include any premium for the organic grain.
“On the economics, as hard as it is for people to believe, it has been the most profitable system,” said researcher Martin Entz.
The reason: lower inputs, including less fertilizer, chemical and fuel.
The rotation supplies its own nitrogen and relies on far fewer machinery operations than other conventional or organic cropping systems.
Many producers have trouble accepting alfalfa as a core element of an organic cropping system, but Entz said farmers are slowly beginning to realize that returning forages and livestock manure to a grain production system is vital.
“We have a grazing revolution going on in Manitoba,” Entz said.
If fuel prices keep increasing, he added, the machinery savings in an organic grain system that includes forages are going to become much greater.
“Increasingly I think the economics of forage are going to be linked to the price of energy.”
Manitoba Agriculture beef cattle specialist Michael Buchen said he was cheered by the economic success of the rotation, because it offers cattle producers an improved place in the farm economy.
“It shows how important livestock could be in an organic situation,” he said.
“It’s a closed circle.”
Cop said this economic analysis answered his one key question for the day: “How can you tie livestock to the whole organic system?”
He felt better about his own organic production system, which includes three quarter sections of wheat, two of barley and one of alfalfa.
“The alfalfa rotation confirms what I’ve been doing out of instinct,” he said.
