ORGANIC FARMING PRINCIPLES

Organic farming is based around the principles of sustainability. It starts with the soil and finishes with the end produce arriving in the hands of the consumer and endeavours to encompass everything in between.

Unlike most conventional farming the responsibilities of the producer do not end at the farm gate. The idea is that the food should not have to travel too far from the farmer to the consumer and that there should be ideally some sort of feed-back to the farmer from his customers. This fulfils two functions, firstly that the farmer needs to know that his produce is what the consumer wants, and secondly the consumer has the right to know where his food comes from, how it is produced, and if he wants to be able to contact the farmer.

When it comes to food production the principles are the same, in that the process revolves around a cycle with every thing in the cycle being inter-dependant on one another. The soil feeds and nurtures the crops and the livestock feed the soil, by recycling their waste, whilst at the same time taking what they need from the plants that grow in the soil.

The soil itself is a complex living organism that has evolved over many millions of years to do a vast range of jobs, from breaking down waste plant products to mobilising vital minerals for plant food as well as harbouring a multitude of insects and fungi which can be harnessed by the farmer to provide plant food, control pests, fight plant diseases, improve soil structure and also discourage certain weeds.

Unfortunately conventional farming has turned its back on these millions of years of evolutionary development preferring to use man made substances to do the job instead. This would not be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that these products actively destroy a lot of the beneficial life within the soil. Fungicides don’t just kill the fungus on the plants but also destroy valuable mycorrhizal fungi within the soil. These fungi play a vital role in providing a bridge between the plants roots and the nutrients that are locked up within the soil. Their demise results in the need for more man made inputs to try and resolve a problem of mans own making.

Chemical fertilizers too, can do a good job of damaging this microenvironment by not only killing these beneficial fungi but also by killing beneficial insects such as earthworms. These products also stick around in the environment for some time. An example of this is one spray routinely used to kill weeds. This spray can be, and often is, sprayed onto crops of grain just before they are harvested. The obvious result of this is that the grain itself gets a good dosing of spray.

It takes a period of 18 months rest for the soil insects and fungi to recover to their previous levels. Organic farming relies on crop rotations to achieve its goals of crop production and the inter-action of grazing livestock is also vital to this. Whilst yields may only be just over half that of conventional methods it does offer a tried and trusted method of food production that goes hand in hand with natural processes dating back millions of years.