The problem is that the very idea of gene-edited crops is anathema to their sector.

“The credibility of organically certified produce is built on the confidence of the shopper that they are choosing to buy organic food because the standards are rigorously maintained,” said a spokesperson for OF&G Organic, an organic certification body in the U.K.

A patchwork of international regulations is developing around gene-edited crops.

The U.K. passed the Genetic Technology Act in March. The legislation set the stage to separate gene-edited crops and animals (called “precision-bred” in the U.K.) from genetically modified organisms as far as regulations are concerned, according to a government news release.

The British government indicated the act would allow gene-edited crops to be more freely developed and grown. Regulations related to the law are now under consultation.

The European Commission, part of the executive of the EU, is undergoing its own debate on “new genomic techniques” (NGTs), an umbrella term that includes gene editing.

Organic certification bodies in the U.K. and EU do not allow gene-edited or genetically modified crops, nor does Canadian organic certification.

In Canada, where genetically modified canola, soybeans and other crops are commonly grown, organic farmers use buffer strips and co-ordinate with neighbours to avoid cross-contamination. When growers can’t obtain certified organic seed, they may obtain an affidavit from the seed company showing their seed is non-GMO.

This spring, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency released guidance on gene-edited crops that will see them regulated like conventionally bred varieties.

Groups including the Canada Organic Trade Association were not pleased when the decision did not include mandatory transparency or traceability measures for gene-edited crops.

The federal government promised a steering committee to oversee transparency and an expansion of Seeds Canada’s variety transparency database. However, the organic sector has argued that, since these measures aren’t mandated, crops will ‘sneak’ into the food system, making it impossible to ensure that organic crops aren’t contaminated.

Coexistence in the U.K.

In the EU and U.K., in contrast, GMO crops are not widely grown.

“There’s absolutely no GMO crops grown commercially in the U.K.,” said Liz O’Neill, director of GM Freeze. As a result, contamination prevention isn’t part of farmers’ business models.

GM Freeze is a U.K. umbrella group that campaigns against GM0 foods. It represents some organic groups.

While many GM0 crops are legal in the U.K., there are strict labelling requirements for food and these put off many consumers and big brands, O’Neill said. GMOs are generally limited to imported foods.

Organic groups are preparing to take greater precautions, but it’s generally viewed as the government’s responsibility to ensure organic certification can continue, O’Neill said.

Before passage of the U.K.’s March act, “OF&G urged (the) U.K. government to reassess the removal of labelling and traceability requirements,” the company’s spokesperson said. “This ‘light touch’ regulation allows gene-edited crops and animals to effectively hide in the food system, taking away consumer choice.”

“The U.K. needs a strong regulatory framework for the rollout of new genomic techniques — one that is responsibly [administrated] and rigorously applied,” the spokesperson added.

GM Freeze advocates for consumer labelling of foods containing gene-edited ingredients, O’Neill said. That would make end-to-end supply-chain traceability necessary and, in her organization’s view, would lower the risk of inadvertent contamination.

It also wants to see government measures — regulatory or guidance-based — to prevent cross-contamination of organic crops.

Coexistence in the EU

The European Commission launched a review of the EU’s rules on gene editing and GMOs in 2021 after ruling its current legislation was “not fit for purpose,” Reuters reported in April of that year.

About 20 years ago, the EU put rigid traceability and labelling requirements on GMOs due to public distrust, and these have led to low adoption of GM crops, said Helene Schmutzler, a policy assistant with IFOAM Organics Europe, an umbrella organization for the European organic food sector.

“The sentiment is still generally quite similar,” she said.

A 2023 report from the Rathenau Institute found that Dutch citizens were unanimous in their view that “regulation of NGT crops is necessary … to prevent harms to the environment and human health, to give consumers freedom of choice, to guard against the potential of the technology to increase inequalities and to ensure that the technology is directed towards contributing to solutions to societal problems.”

The report noted a split in the finer details of public opinion, however. Some Dutch consumers viewed NGTs as necessary to deal with issues like climate change, while others thought they were likely to cause more problems for agriculture and food.

A 2021 report from the U.S. National Library of Medicine indicates that Europeans who say they’re concerned about GMOs in food and drink decreased to 27 per cent in 2019 from 63 per cent in 2005, which it says will pave the way for new regulations.

However, “consumers have the right to know what they buy and if they don’t like it, they have to have the right not to buy it also,” Schmutzler said.

Her organization’s position is that “the burden of ensuring non-GMO production should not fall on farmers and processors who do not wish to use NGTs,” according to a briefing document from the group.

The European Commission has committed to ensuring co-existence, Schmutzler said.

However, “for ‘coexistence’ to be conceivable … EU legal requirements for NGTs need to include identification and traceability of products obtained through NGTs,” her organization stated.

IFOAM Organics Europe also asks that all EU member states set up coexistence measures, including the right to ban cultivation of NGT crops “where coexistence is not feasible.”

It also calls for a liability regime to set up compensation if crops are contaminated.

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The sector had stepped up its call for funding in recent months, noting that without resources to fund the required update the Standards is at risk of being withdrawn under the Standards Council of Canada.

Federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Lawrence MacAuley announced the funding Jan. 26 acknowledging the Canadian organic industry is one of Canada’s fastest-growing agricultural sectors, with more than $5.4 billion in retail sales in 2017.

Growing the Canadian organic sector will contribute to the government’s goal of reaching $75 billion in annual agri-food exports by 2025, he said.

“Canadian organic farmers and food processors are producing a quality product that consumers in Canada and around the world demand,” he said.

The current review of the Standards must be complete by 2020.

The push for this funding support came from key players in the organic sector including Canadian Organic Growers (COG), the Organic Federation of Canada (OFC), the Canadian Organic Trade Association (COTA) and others.

There was an outpouring of support for this, said a spokesperson for the COG, noting it came both from national and provincial groups within the organic community and numerous commodity organizations beyond the sector.

All want to see this sector remain competitive both domestically and abroad, said Rochelle Eisen, COG president.

Jim Robbins, president of the Organic Federation of Canada, whose mandate is the maintenance and interpretation of the Canadian Organic Standards, as well as management of scientific research in organic agriculture in Canada, said both domestic consumers and foreign buyers must be assured organic practices are both ecologically sound and consistent with current scientific knowledge.

“The rapidly growing Canadian organic industry depends on a sound Canadian Organic Standard,” he said.

The Canadian Organic Trade Association is applauding the move and the partnership with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada it represents.

“We take our responsibility for providing a growing portion of food seriously and see the need for taking an increasingly active role within agriculture in Canada,” said Dag Falck, president of COTA board.

The review process is estimated to cost approximately $550,000. The organic industry will be exploring various options with government to obtain the funds to pay the remaining amount.

The Organic Standards were created and became regulated by the federal government in 2009 as international trade increased for organic products in the early 2000s.

At the time, major international trading partners said Canadian products would be banned from their countries if an organic regulation were not put in place.

The Jan. 26 federal funding announcement also includes an additional $72,500 for the COG to put toward development of a user-friendly guide to the Canadian Organic Standards.

As well, COTA has received an additional $95,114 through the AgriMarketing Program, towards its international market development strategy.

The post Feds to help fund Canadian Organic Standards review appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The farmer organization the Manitoba Organic Alliance has teamed up with the University of Manitoba and the provincial Agriculture Department to create a one-year term position for an organic agronomist and Katherine Stanley has been named to the position.

• Read more: Organic Alliance says crop insurance needs an update on organic production

The researcher will split her time between research at the University of Manitoba and consultation with farmers and the Manitoba Organic Alliance. Farm visits are possible if the producer requests them, she said.

“My role is to really build the knowledge capacity and the production capacity with what is already existing in the province,” Stanley said. “There’s a lot of really well-educated, great farmers and it’s a matter of pulling all that together to make sure that information can get translated to all corners of the province.”

It is unclear how much time the new agronomist will spend on farm, something that both she and Manitoba Agriculture organic specialist Laura Telford says will depend largely on the program’s uptake.

Stanley added that she expects the role to adjust as both she and the organizations involved get a better idea of where need is greatest.

“I think that there are a lot of organic producers,” she said. “There’s also a lot of information on organic research and sometimes connecting those two and bridging that knowledge gap can be challenging.”

Stanley hopes to develop a more formalized communication network within the industry during the year.

A product of the University of Manitoba’s natural systems program, Stanley has spent much of the last two years working with Dr. Martin Entz on organic production systems.

“It’s always weeds and soil fertility,” she said of the main issues facing organic producers, issues she expects to run into in her new role.

“I have a background in organic weed managements and mechanical weed control, so hopefully I can take the research capacity and work with farmers into their specific contexts and their specific fields.”

Kate Storey, Manitoba Organic Alliance president, said the position fills a long-empty gap.

Producers have been largely reliant on corporate agronomists until this point, she said. The alliance has been lobbying for a public organic agronomist for several years.

“Since organic production became a thing, all of the farmers, they want to know how to do this better so we can make more profit off our farms,” she said.

The alliance would like to maintain the position long term, although it is unclear if the needed resources will be in place.

This year’s term was supported by Career Focus, a national program aimed at agricultural internships and work experience for recent graduates.

The post Manitoba Organic Alliance names agronomist appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

But that growth continues to create its own set of challenges, most significantly an ongoing shortage of raw ingredient supply.

Sourcing ingredients remains this sector’s key challenge, says Laura Telford, Manitoba’s provincial organic specialist, who is doing an in-depth analysis of Canada’s organic food-processing sector.

Prepared with funding from the federal Organic Science Cluster II, the report when completed next year will be a first-ever attempt to shine a spotlight on the Canadian organic food-processing industry specifically.

Virtually all organic research to date has been related to primary production, notes Telford who began the work in 2015.

• Read more: U.S. organic grain firm buys Saskatchewan elevators
• Read more: Film director Cameron backing Saskatchewan organic pea plant

Yet what ultimately drives production is market demand, and organic processors, like their conventional counterparts, want ingredients sourced as close to home as possible, she said.

That in turn provides the markets for existing and new farm entrants wanting alternatives to the export commodity market.

Telford said as she began this project what struck her initially were the considerable policy barriers and technical restraints facing organic processors, leading her to wonder if they were a holdback on product development. There are fewer restrictions in the U.S.

But her research to date, which has identified 884 companies producing value-added products for human consumption, has revealed otherwise. The report also includes data from interviews with 38 leading firms across Canada.

Canada’s organic standard, with its strict limitations on use of things like colourants or preservatives isn’t the barrier it was believed to be, Telford said.

“We thought that it would be difficult to actually bring new processed foods to market in Canada because of rules and regs in organic,” she said. “That doesn’t seem to be the major barrier. In fact, almost everyone I interviewed said standards haven’t been that big of a deal. They said they just want to know what the rules are and they’ll make it happen… they are innovative in finding new substances to stand in for things you’d traditionally use for food processing.”

Rather, the ongoing challenge — and the signal this research ultimately aims to send to farmers — is finding steady Canadian supplies.

Canada has a relatively small land base of organically managed land — as of 2015 just 1.5 per cent of total agricultural land, according to the Canadian Organic Trade Association.

“It’s the major challenge,” she said, noting both large and small companies prefer to buy from producers as close to home as possible, she said. Transportation costs are an additional challenge, on top of the high prices they’re paying for these supplies.

The report points to multiple initiatives underway to address that challenge, from investments by major breakfast cereal companies to boost acreage to companies making farmland purchases.

The Prairie Organic Grain Initiative, supported by large organic grain buyers and the federal government, is a large collaborative initiative developed by the three Prairie provinces to enhance supply.

“Processors are sending out signals that they’re open for business and farmers are responding,” said Telford, noting other efforts such as firms’ hiring of agronomists to work with farmers on end-use quality.

“We’re also seeing some gains in yields and we’re also seeing the interventions are improving grain quality,” she said.

“Organic producers are starting to understand that they’re not growing a commodity but growing a food for a food processor.”

The report also looks at how organic processors approach marketing.

Few actually rely on the organic stamp alone, Telford said, noting many packaged organic foods will regularly carry multiple claims such as Fair Trade.

Organic processed foods are primarily consumed in British Columbia and Ontario with packaged food sales concentrating primarily in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.

The final report is expected to be released in 2018 through the Canadian Organic Trade Association.

The post Organic processing sector study underway appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Canada is the fifth-largest organic market in the world as well as leading exporter of several organic commodities but gets little assistance from government, says Tia Loftsgard, executive director of Canada Organic Trade Association (COTA).

“Canada’s organic sector should be positioning itself as a world leader,” she told the Commons agriculture committee. “However, the sector on its own cannot achieve this stature when it is continually having to fund its own standards, inspections, and certifications, and to assume all the business risks on its own.”

She added that in their current state, proposed new food safety regulations carry many threats for the organic sector, and pointed out the lack of equitable crop insurance coverage and transition incentives for farmers, which are both offered in other jurisdictions. Just maintaining the status quo is costly too.

“Maintaining the Canadian organic standards review process is going to cost our sector over $1 million by 2020,” she said. “This is a cost that the industry has to bear in Canada, yet it is funded entirely by governments in the United States and in the EU.”

Organic is a unique subsector of Canadian agriculture and trade, as it is limited to traceable organic supply chains and is subject to regulations, standards, third-party inspections, and maximum residue level inspections beyond its conventional counterpart, she said.

Organic trade faces many business risks due to our limited supply options, the unknown risks of any changes to NAFTA and additional testing required on maximum residue levels on Canadian organic products entering foreign markets, particularly because there is no tolerance within the organic sector, she said.

“These non-tariff trade barriers are holding back the growth of our sector and the ability to capitalize on the opportunities that exist,” she said. “At a minimum, the Canadian organic sector should be able to keep pace with its major trading partners and eliminate the non-tariff regulatory barriers that exist.”

There is little about the organic sector in all the agricultural production and import and export trade flows government collects, she said.

“The lack of sound data limits the ability to assess market opportunity or the loss of market opportunity for Canadian producers, manufacturers, and businesses,” she said.

As harmonized sales codes are used to negotiate trade agreements, maintain trade statistics, and identify goods and shipments that pose a risk to the health, safety, and security of Canada, the organic sector is very limited in its ability to track trends, evaluate trade flows, and have concrete data, she said. The last time census data was collected on the organic sector was in 2011.

Canada has organic equivalency agreements with 90 per cent of its major trading partners and is in the process of negotiating them with Mexico and South Korea, she said.

Wallace Hamm, general manager of Pro-Cert Organic, told the MPs the sector badly needs an overhaul of the eight-year-old federal organic regulatory regime to remove non-tariff trade barriers. The regime is being transferred to the Safe Food by the end of April.

Among the changes is no longer requiring Canadian organic products to be certified to U.S. standards as they only cover health food products and pet food. Another will permit Canadian products to use the EU organic label.

The new regime needs fraudulent organic claims, he said. U.S. organic rules contain “robust penalties and fines and a five-year revocation period.”

The biggest concern is the demise of the Canada Organic Office at CFIA, he said. “Although underfunded and staffed, it was a highly effective and internationally recognized administrative body that was equivalent to the USDA national organic program office,” Hamm said. “The unheralded and unrationalized demise of the Canada Organic Office and the dispersion of the COO staff throughout the CFIA, coupled with the erasing of all organic titles from correspondence and legal documents, will send — and is sending — negative shock waves throughout the domestic and international organic community. The net message is one of lost emphasis and interest in the organic sector by the government.”

The post Organic food industry feels shortchanged by government appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The cows’ seasonal diet is the secret ingredient imparting the distinctive flavours of fine cheeses this Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que. couple makes with the rich milk their certified organic small herd of Brown Swiss produce.

Their farm, Ferme des Belles Prairies, has been in the Gosselin family since 1950 and certified organic for more than 20 years.

Gosselin and Dufresne became cheese makers and started their on-farm cheese company Au Gré des Champs Fromagerie. Today they sell a variety of high-end speciality cheese, branding and marketing lines as ’summer’ and ’winter’ cheeses to customers who love both the darker yellow-orange cheese they produce while the cows graze the fields, and the much whiter cheese they produce in winter.

Being a cheese maker or certified organic dairy producer isn’t unusual in Quebec, of course. The provincial directory of certified organic products for Quebec currently lists 111 organic milk producers, certified by either Ecocert or Organisme de certification Québec-Vrai.

What distinguishes Gosselin and Dufresne’s farm business is that they’re still one of the relatively few cheese makers in Quebec who remain in the highly regulated business of producing raw milk cheese.

Quebec is the only province in Canada where raw milk cheeses aged fewer than 60 days can be sold, so long as all the required standards related to hygiene, monitoring and inspections are maintained.

Going this route was all part of a move to diversify their dairy farm and at the same time creating a product that would help maintain a precarious agricultural heritage in Quebec, said Gosselin, speaking through a translator.

“They were looking at ways to improve the profitability of the farm. Instead of expanding and having more cows they decided to go for cheese making,” said Francois Labelle, organic dairy production expert with Valacta, Centre d’expertise en production laitiere Quebec-Atlantique, who also served as translator for non-French-speaking visitors to the farm during the Canadian Organic Science Conference earlier this year.

To say that Gosselin and Dufresne have been successful is an understatement. They have produced award-winning cheeses and today employ nine persons, including their daughter Marie-Pier. They utilize all the milk their small herd of 30 produces and their organic management methods for their land have enabled their 65-hectare farm to be almost entirely self-sufficient in feed.

Au Gres des Champs today includes an elegant storefront retail site where other gourmet made-in-Quebec food products are sold and they are a popular destination for tours and product tastings.

Their farm business is an outstanding example of the astonishing variety of organic producers doing value-added production in a part of Canada where there has been significant adoption of organic farming methods by farmers who see this mode of production not only as a way to contribute to a healthier bottom line for their farm, but to foster a more sustainable environment and robust rural culture.

In 2015 of 39,000 farmers in Quebec nearly 1,040 were specializing in organic agriculture, with dairy products, including milk, cheese and yogurt notably producers’ top offerings.

That’s a small fraction but still signalling significant gains by the sector here.

“The latest data we have from 2012 shows that we have 3.6 per cent of (provincial) farmers who are certified organic, but that’s data from 2012,” says Caroline Halde, an assistant organic agriculture professor at Université Laval and the September conference’s co-chair. Quebec’s considerable uptake of organic farming is attributable to several factors, including very good incentives offered by the provincial ministry, she said.

MAPAQ (Ministere de l’Agriculture, des Pecheries et de l’Alimentation du Quebec) has fostered a policy environment and invested millions in biological agriculture, or organic farming, including funding to help farmers make the transition.

This is a province where there is very well-managed certification services and distribution models such as Équiterre that link farmers with consumers of organic and local food.

Farm organizations themselves are a key driving force behind this province’s organic growth, Halde said.

“They’re just very well organized,” she said noting organic farmers in Quebec hosted conferences and field events dating back at least 40 years.

“That has really helped with the knowledge transfer to farmers,” she said.

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Dag Falck told the recent Organic Connections conference in Regina that while organic farmers are rarely targeted by consumers who have concerns over how their food is produced, they are sometimes accused of making the rest of agriculture look bad.

“It seems like the finger is being pointed at us like we caused this,” Falck said in an interview following his presentation. “That’s what I’m picking up… it is, ‘look at what we have to deal with because you wrecked it for us.’”

Falck, a former organic inspector who has worked as organic program manager for Nature’s Path Organic Foods since 2003, said there is an element of that among organic consumers who tend to be vocal about their concerns about mainstream agricultural practices. “They are making claims saying you should avoid conventional food because of all of these problems and find the alternative in organic food,” he said. “It’s not really organic farmers saying that so much as it is consumer groups.”

But because organic production systems offer an alternative to modern agricultural tools, such as pesticides and genetically modified crops, it makes it harder for the industry to convince consumers those approaches are essential.

Falck said the challenge facing the organic sector is determining whether it wants to be part of the broader discussion around social licence and if so, how it should participate.

He noted the industry’s efforts so far to win back consumers’ trust with information campaigns and “talking points” that explain modern agriculture aren’t working, because the problem isn’t a lack of information. “They basically don’t agree,” he said.

“What’s missing is… what’s the action that they are going to take? The trust is lost, so what is the action that they are going to take to change something to regain the trust?

Telling consumers that they are wrong won’t work. “Everybody knows in marketing that the consumer is right. The consumer being right doesn’t mean that they are scientifically right or whatever, it is that they have choice and what they choose is right,” Falck said.

Telling consumers products are safe because there is a regulatory system isn’t effective because the regulatory system doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. The government does not test new products and technologies, it reviews data supplied by applicants.

“So I think that to develop a social licence for conventional food, at some point, they are going to have to address the regulatory system,” he said. “And sit down and have that conversation with consumers who are having concerns, and say that ‘we think GMOs are safe and we’ve changed the approval process to really scrutinize it and really make sure that it is safe.

‘And if we find out in that process that it’s not, we’re going to stop using it or we’re going to phase it out, or we’re going to look for alternatives.’ That’s the kind of conversation that would lead to trust.”

Falck urged organic farmers to avoid being evangelists for how they practise farming and become more engaged in sharing knowledge that can benefit the whole sector.

“Focus more on the tools and sharing those tools more openly and less on everybody’s got to be certified organic,” he said. “Instead of saying, we want you to become organic, we need to say, you know another way to solve the issue of fertility or weed control by using less pesticides, you could try this tool, i.e. cover cropping.

“I think the shift that needs to happen is we need to start saying, ‘we have a contribution to agriculture, to all of agriculture.’”

“We won’t become a leader in agriculture if we are constantly saying you are doing it wrong.”

This article first appeared on OrganicBiz.ca.

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At least 30 farmers began a transition in 2015, convinced they can become more profitable using a farming system that also costs less to operate, says provincial organic specialist Laura Telford.

They are conventional farmers who’ve crunched the numbers and are seeing a business case to convert, she said.

Judging by the crowd at an Ag Days seminar devoted to organic production, it appears there’s more thinking about it.

“A lot of people are looking at our cost of production with interest and the fact you can be quite profitable in organic agriculture,” said Telford.

It’s a marked contrast to years gone by when a couple dozen farmers already organically farming attended.

About 140 were at last month’s meeting listening to presentations about the transition process, other farmers’ management practices, and how farming this way can be good for the bottom line.

Manitoba Agriculture crop production budget expert Roy Arnott told the seminar that based on expected costs and returns for crops this year, organic producers could see net profit levels range from $100 to $300 per acre.

• Read more: Organic potatoes a tough row to hoe — but profitability makes the effort to produce them worthwhile

That compares with conventionally produced crops, whose net profits range between $10 to $50 per acre, he said.

Those numbers may not be coming as a surprise, said Telford. “People have been hearing about this for a while,” she said.

“Sometimes it takes extra low prices on the conventional side to make them notice those high organic prices,” she said.

Making the move to an organic system is neither simple nor quick, however, as panellists attested.

“It’s kind of no man’s land when you’re comfortable with a conventional system and you’re trying to anticipate how you’ll go through a few years of a learning curve to get to the other side,” said Darcy Hickson, who switched to organic farming in 1999. He and his son Donovan now farm together on 1,000 acres and also raise organic cattle.

Brandon-area organic farmer Ian Grossart described the struggles he had trying to start the transition to organic in the late 1990s with a field of echinacea. It was a crop they weren’t familiar with and was a mess of weeds, he said.

“I probably convinced some conventional neighbours to never go organic,” he joked.

But the Grossarts persevered, and today grow a range of organic crops on a farm where they also raise grass-fed beef.

Organic farming is “a steep learning curve,” but fortunately there are more resources now available to help farmers decide if it’s the right direction to take, said Telford.

“We’ve learned a lot in the last decade with respect to weed management, designing good crop rotations,” she said.

A new publication Organic Field Crop Handbook has recently been published and is available through Canadian Organic Growers online.

Farmers will have another chance to network with organic buyers, and to learn more about the skills required for managing an organic production system later this month.

The two-day Prairie Organics: Think Whole Farm Feb. 18 and 19 will provide existing organic producers with more information to build their production and marketing skills and help them connect to potential buyers who will be present at the show for one-on-one meetings.

Breakout sessions for grain and livestock producers are targeted at those now farming organically. A separate stream for vegetable production will provide more information to existing conventional vegetable producers who may be considering transitioning a few acres to organic.

There are fewer than 150 organic farmers in Manitoba. The majority is strictly field crop producers (120), plus 27 crop and livestock producers.

Only five farms currently grow organic vegetables for retail or wholesale markets. There are other smaller-scale growers selling consumer direct.

The post More farmers looking at organic potential appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“Why not grow organic soybeans?” he asked producers gathered at the Ian N. Morrison research farm near Carman late last month for the Manitoba Pulse & Soybean Growers’ annual SMART Day.

“Something farmers are always looking for is on-farm diversification, so we’ve been working with farmers to help them shift part of their farm operation to certified organic as a form of diversification,” said the University of Manitoba plant science professor. “Doing this is possible; it works.”

Research on organic soybean production has been ongoing at the site for about a decade, and over the last eight years the average yield has been 28.7 bushels an acre using OAC Prudence, Entz said.

And while those yields are lower than conventional soybeans, he added that the premiums for organic beans make the venture worthwhile.

“The price for organic soybeans right now… is about $26 to $30 a bushel, depending on if it’s food grade or feed,” he said, adding that demand is also high.

An ongoing project backed by the university, the Western Grains Research Foundation and the pulse growers’ association assists interested farmers in transitioning a portion of their farm to organic by providing guidance and individual, one-on-one farm plans.

“Soybeans are our most consistent organic crop, so there is potential here,” he said. But he added that success requires management practices that might be new to producers, such as in-row flame weeding. Inter-row tillage is also effective for managing weeds in organic soybeans, he said.

“If you’re not using herbicides, the danger of wide-row soybeans doesn’t apply,” he explained, referring to the development of resistant weeds in conventional row crops. “If you’re growing them organically, you should use inter-row cultivation, so space them as close as you can, while still allowing for that cultivation.”

Effective crop rotation also plays a crucial role in organic soybean management, Entz said. And while some might think corn isn’t an option in organic rotations, Entz told producers to think again.

Holding up a lengthy corn plant, he said, “some of you who grow soybeans are also interested in growing corn, and there are corn alternatives as well. This is actually an open-pollinated food-grade corn.”

Variety selection

Choosing the right soybean variety is also important. Student researcher Michelle Carkner is working to identify which varieties are best suited to Manitoba, using plots at the research farm as well as at producer sites.

“We’re still learning things about growing soybeans conventionally, we’re learning even more about growing organic soybeans,” said Carkner.

Trials have looked at the effectiveness of OAC Petrel, Toma, Tundra, Krios, Jari, Auriga, Savannah and SK0007 plus new and unregistered varieties in the hopes of finding the right fit for organics in Manitoba’s shorter growing season.

One thing that’s become apparent is that higher seeding rates increase yields and decrease weed pressure in organic beans.

“And because the price of organic soybeans is so high, growers can get their money back when they increase seeding rates,” she said.

Some producers at the demonstration were concerned about the 36-months transition to organic, a period when crops must be produced organically, but can’t be sold for a premium.

Entz said that by doing a farm plan, and looking at transition strategies that could be managed, and Carkner agreed.

“That’s why people might want to look at starting with part of their farm, maybe putting it into a green manure first, there are ways,” she said, adding some buyers will also offer premiums during the 36 months to bring more organic production online.

The post Higher seeding rate needed for organic soybeans appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The cash will be put towards the Prairie Organic Grain Initiative (POGI), a four-year $2.2-million program being rolled out this spring by western Canadian organic associations that also have pledged financial support from organic industry partners.

The initiative will focus on increasing both the quantity and quality of organic growers’ production, quality and profitability, while helping them expand into growing international markets.

“By helping to increase the capacity of western organic growers to compete in the global organic food market, we are ensuring that the western Canadian economy can continue to grow and prosper,” said Michelle Rempel, minister of state for Western Economic Diversification in a release.

The organic food industry is the most dynamic and rapidly growing sector of the global food industry, and is estimated to be worth $63 billion (U.S.) globally.

The value of the Canadian organic food market has increased 300 per cent since 2006, and is now worth an estimated $3.7 billion. It continues to outpace other agri-food sectors, with 400 western Canadian small- and medium-size enterprises now adding value to the organic grains through further processing.

Yet, the number of Canadian farmers is not expanding. Certified organic growers represent just 1.8 per cent of all farms in Canada.

There simply aren’t enough producers keeping pace with this demand, said Organic Alberta executive director Becky Lipton.

“This project will support expansion of Canadian organic grain and field crops while simultaneously building resiliency and stability in the sector. By achieving increased quantity and quality we will not only meet the demand but be leaders in continued market expansion,” she said.

The Prairie Organic Grain Initiative (POGI) will be housed by Organic Alberta, but is a partnership across the entire Prairie organic sector with Sask Organics and the Manitoba Organic Alliance, plus the Certified Organic Association of B.C., the Canadian Organic Trade Association, the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada and USC Canada through The Bauta Family Initiative on Canadian Seed Security.

Industry support of just under $1 million for POGI is coming from grain buyers and processors of major organic brands such as Grain Millers, Nature’s Path, General Mills, Dave’s Killer Bread, Cliff Bar and others.

“We recognize the Prairie Organic Grain Initiative as a vital strategic step in helping keep pace with ever-increasing consumer demand, and we are pleased to invest in a strong future for the western Canadian organic sector,” said Rick Schwein, president, Grain Millers Canada Corp. in a news release.

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