I still have a container with around 2000 plants in it. They arrived from Siberia in November but since then the weather has been so bad that the soil conditions are not suitable for planting. Some of these plants are covering in young leaf. Although the UK is experiencing severe flooding across the Midlands and West country, we might be wet, but the higher ground in the seabuckthorn field is not waterlogged now. Wet – but if I dig a hole it is not going to fill with water as you watch it.
The first planting will be infilling those plants that I dug out last year. They had disease symptoms similar to being a fusarium that could have infected and potentially killed half my plants. The disease was not fatal and although it was present in many plants, they recovered. The result was a loss in plant growth in 2013 and a lesson in needing to understand the crop better.
Across the field the Siberian varieties are coming into leaf. Klaudia again was first in mid-January, together with Sudarushka. Augustina next, followed by Elizaveta, Inya and Chuiskaya with Etna and Altaiskaya next. Rosinka and Jessel are two varieties new to the field in 2012/13 and as young plants they too are now moving.
Against these my Latvian, German and Finnish plants are still recognising that it should be winter. They should be confused though as this year so far we have only had two light frosts. Day temperatures between 6-11 deg C and night temperatures around 2 deg. So I expect this spring and summer to potentially have a high risk of disease.
The experience of last summer has shown that seabuckthorn on my farm is suseptible to disease. Reports from the ISA conference though seemed to indicate that it was a bad year for disease in Europe as well. If I was going to farm the seabuckthorn conventionally I would be buying in chemicals and looking to use fungicides this year. But finally I have decided that I must make a decision about whether or not to go organic.
The decision was made easier last week. On the television program “Dragon’s Den” a pitch was made by two ladies wanting to develop a sports drink made from natural ingredients. It was a good pitch and an interesting product with two credible entrepeneurs proposing it. It fell down though when the dragons pointed out that natural does not mean chemical free. The product’s USP was its natural ingrdients. The dragons’ arguement was that a natural ingredient could be grown using chemicals. Consumers looking for natural products will also look for them being chemical free. So the arguement that “natural” is a powerful enough message did not stack up. This was enough for me.
I had believed at one point that the fact that I was growing without chemicals should be enough. Organic farming costs more which is why it has required a premium on its products. The power of the supermarkets has eroded this premium and as a farmer who has to run a viable business, I have had to question the economic sustainability of going organic.
But the decision to go organic is more clearcut with seabuckthorn. This farm is already highly committed to the environment. The seabuckthorn is being grown without chemicals or artificial fertilisers, so the transition to becoming organic is easy. I would have been satisfied with labelling the crop as “naturally Functional” or a superfruit, but as a fruit it is a natural ingredient. But when it gets into the marketplace as a new product consumers will need to be able to judge it clearly and unambiguously. Its quality must be understandable and uncomplicated. The phrase organic delivers that simple message with complication or ambiguity.
So the choice then has been which certification agency to go with. Seabuckthorn is grown in Europe as both organic and biodynamic. As have been sympathetic to the organic rationale since I started to grow seabuckthorn in 2009. Biodynamics I have yet to understand. But I would like to see our seabuckthorn becoming biodyamic when I have learnt what it means to farm biodynamically. So again the decision as to who to go to has been chosen by logic and I am filling out the application form with the Biodynamic Association.
The confidence of registering now also comes from starting to adopt a soil and plant health management system to put a consistent scientific methodology into delivering results. In the past the soil on this farm has been treated as a medium in which one grows a high yielding crop. The crop’s needs are provided by inputs imported to the farm. Recognition of the need for returning organic matter to the soil is provided through straw that is chopped and ploughed into the soil. Compaction is managed through subsoiling. Ploughing is still a routine cultivation.
I recently made a contribution to the Sustainable Agriculture network on Linkedin. The piece related to the Minimum Tillage/ No-Till system. The system is a response to lowering carbon emissions when soil is turned over. So our ploughing operations run against this concept. Alternatively no system is infelxible and we plough when circumstances are right. It buries excessive crop organic matter, improves soil structure, provides drainage. It is an expensive operation burning more diesel fuel as the deeper operation requires more horsepower.
This mechanical intervention is a system operation to provide the crop with a medium to grow in. A medium that has a structure through which the roots can penetrate both laterally and down into the water table. A structure that allows drainage so that the roots are not waterlogged and nutrients are avalable.
But that is probably where the sympathy for the soil ends. The emphasis is on plant health through understanding its problems and needs. The thought that the soil has a capacity to provide an economically beneficial level of bio-available nutrients and that there needs to be a balance of beneficial fungi and bacteria against pathogenic one’s is not really on the big farm agenda.
My seabuckthorn is a small crop area. Growing organically means that I have removed from my management toolbox the chemical alternatives for disease/ pest control. I must look to taking the maximum benefit that i can from the soil. Not only the benefit, but ensure that I keep under control the reservoir of fungal diseases that naturally exist in the soil.
So this year starts a process to develop a soil health management system, balanced with a plant health management system. It needs to be specific to seabuckthorn as it needs to take into account which fungal diseases my plants might be more susceptible to. Soil health also equals understanding the soil biology. That is stage one – by the end of this month there should be some soil sample results to provide a start to a process of understanding the status of the soil that the seabuckthorn is growing in.
As I write this I am thinking that this must come across as not knowing anything. I could just accept that I am going to grow seabuckthorn by planting it in the ground. Providing basic fertiliser without much thought or question: accept that seabuckthorn is resilient to disease but will succomb to problems from time to time. This form of management will provide a yield of berries of mixed quality with minimum effort.
Mixed quality is not what I want. Neither is it what the market should be prepared to accept. Nor will it deliver what a consistent product to the end using consumer. The consumer is the most important link in the chain. If the consumer does not like the product, it will remain on the shelf unsold. If the consumer does not receive the benefit that they expect from the product when they bought it, they will not buy it again. So I believe understanding quality is the most important issue. Growing consistently good quality crops is the key to delivering quality product to the consumer. A happy consumer is the key to a sustainable and viable farm.
