Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

> I'm focusing here on the part, "more profitable growing through less 
> bought inputs, less need for water, fewer losses from pests and disease, 
> and less vulnerability to fossil fuel problems now or in the future."

<There are a few extra difficulties in rural Ireland for organic producers. 
Immagine a grower selling an organic head of broccoli on the farmers market. 
Customer takes it home, cooks it and puts in on the family dinner table. One 
of the children notices a cooked caterpillar in the brocolli. The producer 
(of Dutch origin) got fined 14 thousand euros to compensate the Irish family 
for loss of apetite in an Irish court. Happens quite a lot.

> I appreciate the detail you put into your account of growing in Ireland, 
> and your production for the family is important. But how does the price of 
> petrol figure into the cost of growing? Are you saying globalization of 
> food undercuts local food producers?

<I think it is a given that globalisation undercuts local producers. In 
Ireland at the moment that is mostly beef inported from Brasil that is 
extensively produced way below what is possible locally. It used to be the 
same with lamb from New Zealand and Australia. We have to feed our animals 
for at least 5-6 months of the year when there is not enough gras growth due 
to climate. In the last year it are the dairy farmers that have seen milk 
prices drop and their profits evaporate. (because of rBSH in the US)
But farmers in India and Mexico have been suffering from American rice and 
corn exports for a long time.

As to the cost of fuel being important...if I make hay and get a contractor 
in, a bale of my own gras under the form of hay or silage will cost me 
something like $15-20. Bought in hay easily comes to $35 or more. That is 
because of fuel cost mainly. Other than that if I have to drive to a farmers 
market 30 miles away the cost of fuel makes  making a profit nearly 
impossible. Let us say that driving a vehicle here costs around $2.000 on 
tax and insurance alone. Add fuel and repairs (and believe me with the state 
of the roads here there will be repairs) and transport becomes a major cost. 
Especially that the main markets for organic produce are Cork (70 miles) and 
Dublin (360 miles) away. There used to be a COOP of organic West Cork 
producers that went bust quite fast because the director drained the cash 
away to his own pocket and then started as a distributor of organic 
supplements and tools from the stocks of the bancrupt COOP that he snatched 
up at rockbottom prices. No more central distribution of organic produce 
combined with some big financial losses.



> On to deeper questions, and trust me, I don't have all the answers. Are 
> there ways to undercut the global imports or compete on quality, 
> freshness, or to sell to a clientele that wants organic? Are there ways to 
> cut growing costs enough by adopting certain crops and not others, by 
> changing the scale of land cultivated downward, by avoiding animals, by 
> growing intensively, or by doing without the cost of machinery, labor or 
> bought inputs?

< I have no machinery of my own much. What needs big power we do with the 
horses. I do not pay for labor as such but we definitely get through a lot 
of food. Avoiding animals is out when you want to be self sufficient here 
since the plants that do best here have not enough protein or fatty acids. 
The most interesting crops can not be sold locally for there is no interest 
in them. Native Irish here have only discovered onions and tomatoes in the 
last twenty years if that. Also most of the organic producers (99%) are not 
native Irish but from mainland Europe (same as myself) which means that it 
is hard to sell in a xenophobic society except for the big cities.

As to inputs...This part of Ireland has been exporting food and fertility 
for 800 years without ever giving anything back. When we arrived here there 
was not a square yard of fertile or even just flat soil. We have for near 25 
years been importing organic materials and we have had to build our soil 
from scratch. I have learned that when you export more than you import that 
you lose soil and vise versa.
Most of our imports consisted of free saw dust and wood shavings. And in the 
last five years or so we have imported huge amounts of free fish and shell 
fish waste. However we are now emerging out of a rosy period when the 
scavenger could get what he needed for free. (transport and labor of some 
free commodity is still expensive)

I have seen organic producers completely exhaust reasonable soil here in 
less than 5 years by avoiding inputs to keep cost down.
I think that in America in the grain fields soil destruction takes on 
average 20 years or so.
Of course plants consist mostly of just water and air (CO2) but a healthy 
plant needs some 40 different elements and any one of those can become a 
limiting factor if you sell stuff and not replace the lost minerals. You 
should really bring a cart of night soil back from the farmers market or 
eventually you will loose your fertility.

John