Author: britishseabuckthorn

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The science of blueberries

britishseabuckthorn

In 1963 the sea around our farm on the Naze froze. Lobsters and crabs crawled up the beach to get out of the cold water, only to freeze on land.

This week snow has again come to the UK. Maybe our Siberian sea buckthorn plants will feel more at home having some real winter temperatures but by next week it will return to normal. I hope it will because our plants develop early and it would be a disaster if these wintery conditions coincided with pollination.

Like the weather our world is changing, its human population is growing in number, sophistication and affluence. The world’s cities are growing and with growth comes the demand for global superfoods often driven by trend, fad and fashion. In the UK avocados have become a luxury staple food, but in China the demand is exploding with demand going from 1.5million kilos in 2013 to 30 million in 2017.

Here superfruits like blueberry have seen 11% year on year growth in consumption for a decade. All season demand has been met by investment in growing methods and plant breeding to respond to global trade. Fresh, good tasting foods with a declared high nutritional value must be a winner. But in this information age internet sites and media give so confusing viewpoints. Take blueberries for example. If you type in “Why are blueberries good for your health” you get the Telegraph, the Mail, Mercola.com giving glowing health benefit offerings on cell protection, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, protection of brain neurons, anti-aging and so on – whereas the NHS says research is inconclusive, but valued as one of your “Five a day”.

We rely on scientific research for knowledge but its interpretation is often hard to understand. Last month the Commissioner for European Health and Food Safety suggested that there was a general mistrust of science by the public. This was not because science was not credible but in an era of evolving scientific advancement, communicating results in plain language was poor. People often do not understand research results and so it is easily rejected by negative, and false negative subjective views found on social media sites.

Sea buckthorn is a fruit similar to blueberry. Like blueberry it is nutrient rich, containing flavonoids, polyphenols, and anthocyanins and so on – but do we really need to understand the science of precisely how a fruit delivers a specific benefit to appreciate it is good for us. The internet site providing  views on blueberry, both those of the press and the NHS both say it is good for you, whether it is the anthocyanins and your brain, or the antioxidants and your cells does it matter? The principal issue is that the food is natural and not ultra-processed, is that not enough?

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Investing in machines – benefits and challenges

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This week as a pair of hares came looping down the sea buckthorn rows it was clear that spring is coming. Varieties Jessel, Klaudia, Etna and others are showing leaf. The year is already underway and it is a crucial year when we have to pull all the knowledge we have accumulated since 2009 into focus to deliver our first harvest and take it to market.

Time is always a precious commodity. Weeding has stolen many days each year. Our first 2018 investment in a Landini tractor and ladurner cultivator will buy back this time. First trials show an excellent job, rotovating the weeds in the area close to the plants creating an organic mulch of the top soil. The first pass of the machine has cut the shallow lateral roots of the plants and we will have to wait to see if this creates any detrimental impacts. It may be the plants compensate by establishing deeper roots, which could be positive in the long run to help sourcing a deeper water table in dry summers.

ladurner cultivator

Adopting the Ladurner cultivator raises some thoughts regarding the sea buckthorn fly (Rhagoletis batava). It can destroy up to 50% of the crop, and although not seen in the UK yet has expanded across Asia and Europe. As we are determined to maintain our organic form of growing sea buckthorn, the option of using chemicals is not available to us. Netting all the plants offers a first line of defence, but over a large area can netting offer a 100% option?

The sea buckthorn fly lay eggs which become larva which overwinter in the soil beneath the plants. One suggestion is to create a barrier on top of the soil preventing the larvae from penetrating the soil and leaving them exposed to the elements and insect predators. The Landini will create a soft open soil under the plants for these larvae to burrow into, so our mechanical solution to weeding may solve one problem and create a worse one. As part of our trials we will look at increased autumn cultivations after the egg hatching season as this might kill fragile larvae in the soil.

Moving away from the farm, this week has revealed research on the potential hazards of consuming ultra-processed foods. Consumer demand for convenience and the food industry response needs to always focus on the fact that food is a primary means of maintaining health. The quality of ingredients and how they are treated impacts on the nutritional value of any food to benefit the end consumer.

Ultra-food processing is extreme but the issue of nutritional quality is something we need to focus on in developing our sea buckthorn crop, harvesting and how it reaches our consumers.

Our field management must cross check on sustainability. How we can reduce bought in inputs, reduce our impact on the environment – but more than that, maintain and improve the biodiversity around us. This will provide a good soil. A good soil will deliver a healthy plant and the necessary nutrients and trace elements that improve fruit quality.

Harvest needs to be fast and clean. The concept is simple but ensuring quality comes from being continually critical of the process. With 2018 being our first harvest quality is both our vision and our challenge.

 

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The importance of standards and nutrition

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UK farming and the rural economy has seen many changes over the past 35 years. The global market, the growth of the retail food giants and technological improvement has driven agriculture forward. Farms have grown in size and scale – developing businesses where enterprise seizes every opportunity to grow. Alongside this, smaller farms have changed through innovative diversification, driven by passion and belief in great product. Behind this though is the stark fact that all these farms – whether large or small are responding to the need to remain viable.

At Devereux farm we started to grow sea buckthorn as a means of looking for future viability. In 2002 our dairy herd was sold in a falling milk price market. It is sad to see this trend has increased with numbers of UK herds dropping by half to less than 10,000. The loss of our milking herd left a vacuum that we needed to fill and as farmers the desire to fill it with a natural, wholesome food product was desirable.

2005 saw the introduction of exotic fruits such as noni, gogi, and acai into the US consumer market. These fruits had by analysis high levels of nutrients and traditional medicinal use associated with health benefit.  Sea buckthorn at that time was a northern hemisphere version of these exotic fruits.

The subject of high nutrient content is difficult. Nutrient content is variable based on climate and the environment where the food is grown. The sea buckthorn that we grow is not grown in the extreme climate of its native Siberia. It is however of a genetic ecotype that has a capacity to produce a fruit with higher than normal levels of nutrients.

Harnessing genetic ecotype and providing growing conditions to provide a healthy plant is the basis for the success of our 2018 harvest.

Sea buckthorn has been widely studied and many research papers are published through a great series of books edited by Prof. Virendra Singh. Volume 2 of this series, on biochemistry and pharmacology exposes the nutrient diversity within sea buckthorn from around the globe. High levels of vitamins A, B, C, E; omega fatty acids; flavonoids; sterols, polyphenols alongside minerals are all present, but what we need to find is what is typical in our fruit.

All fruit has a capacity to add to a healthy diet. None provide an all-encompassing health silver bullet, but it is helpful to understand nutritional strengths, and to the grower these can be used to create credible standards of quality for consumers to judge on their merits.

With this in mind, this year we are developing crop trials alongside a highly respected UK horticultural institute to analyse our methods and fruit to start to move towards being able to create those credible standards.

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David’s February Sea Buckthorn Field Update

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January as usual is the month when we start to see some of our sea buckthorn plants breaking bud. Practically at the moment we are focusing on pruning all of the plants and we are aiming to complete this by the end of February. Alongside this the youngest plantation is being weeded and all plants that have been windblown will be given a stake to straighten them up. Wind has been a problem for smaller and younger plants that have not fully established roots. I think this also results from strong gusting winds that we have on the coast. Although it is not a big problem it is now important that these plants are straightened so they do not snag on the tractor and Ladurna cultivator – which excitingly should be arriving next week.

Pruning also allows a focus on which varieties are best suited to our farm. This year we will be ordering some more plants from Siberia (also exciting). Of the ten varieties on site we need to be focusing on those that yield best; have the right taste and size of berry; and have a more compact shape for ease of management. Interestingly our first discussions with buyers indicate that varieties with different distinctive taste may have different culinary uses, so our selection of varieties will need to be concentrating on best product suitability.

Product suitability was flagged up this week in articles from a French company – Superfruiticals, who have been working with sea buckthorn for ten years. Sea buckthorn’s anti-oxidant properties are often quoted. Superfruiticals are showing how the amino acids, fatty acids and vitamins all combine to produce a real anti-microbial activity that can be used as a natural preservative often doubling the shelf life of products. They have developed products for use as meat preservatives that replace E number ingredients that are also more cost effective than other natural alternatives such as rosemary. Sea buckthorn is so often quoted for its use in cosmetics and supplements but this shows another example of its versatility as a natural replacement for formulated ingredients used in food production.

Superfruiticals also mentions the potential in sea buckthorn leaf. The harvesting system that we are designing will create sea buckthorn leaf as a by-product. Its nutrient content is different to the berry but just as complex. Research has indicated its potential in animal feeds and this will be a subject for investigation this year.

 

David

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January pruning and thoughts on the future

britishseabuckthorn

January is being January. Damp, cold and maybe a bit of post-Christmas blues. Pruning the sea buckthorn has started in earnest. The focus is on the youngest plants, a field established in 2015 with a mix of Siberian varieties set out with four different plant spacings. Managing the main orchard of mature plants has been the priority for the past couple of years so these plants haven’t had as much attention. This month it is the turn of these young plants to be manicured and hand weeded to make the site looked loved again.

This hand weeding is motivated by the thought that very soon we will take delivery of an orchard tractor and Ladurna cultivator. This will revolutionise the time taken on mundane but important field work in containing the spread of weeds.

Personally I still have a confused mind about weed control. I have just read the Soil Association 70th anniversary edition of their magazine Mother Earth. It combines articles from its founders back in the 1940s mirrored by comment by the leaders and prime movers of the organic movement today. Weed control comes about because I feel, or are told that these plants will compete for soil nutrients and moisture that will impact on the yield of my crop. Against this my gut tells me that our site’s soil will dry to concrete if it is left as exposed bare ground. The presence of any form of plant will catch dew in the early morning even in the driest of summers, and shade the soil from evaporation. This plant presence also provides a habitat for insects that may predate on pests of my precious sea buckthorn. The roots of these weed plants penetrate the soil helping to improve its structure. Continuous cutting of these weeds will provide organic matter that will break down and feed the soil with nutrients both for my crop and soil health.

Soil Health is a complex issue. The whole farming industry is focusing on ways of improving soil health as it has the capacity to naturally improve crop quality, improve drainage, reduce soil run off and makes the soil easier to work – reducing cultivation costs. This is but one issue wrapped up in the debate about how to reform the Agriculture industry post Brexit.

Regardless of the ramifications of Brexit the debate on agriculture is rightly described as a once in a generation opportunity to scrutinise the past, identify deliverable solutions to current issues and inspire positive change for the future. The challenges ahead of climate change, economic imbalance, aging, poor diet and associated health issues demand focus, determination and cohesive management.

The launch of the DEFRA 25 year environment plan; the setting up of a RSA Commission on Food,Farming and Countryside and Minister Michael Gove citing a substantive understanding of the issues is all positive but this debate is too important to be political. The setting up of an RSA Commission on Food, Farming and the Countryside will hopefully provide the in depth consultation to allow all views to be aired; assessed; moulded and utilised for reforms that will challenge current and past policies.  Our NHS is in crisis more than ever before. It is the duty of the food industry and policy makers to re-think this whole issue. A July 2017 study of 19 EU countries including the UK suggests that “Ultra processed foods” are intrinsically linked to the rise in obesity – this the result of a highly regulated food industry; national health services focused on illness not good health; an education system that has not invested in the importance of food and diet. This debate may have started because of Brexit, but hopefully it will not become sidelined by it. Change is needed but not within 25 years, it needs to start now.

Change is never easy however and for us at Devereux farm at the start of 2018, the year ahead is daunting. On the basis that we are going to have our first harvest and deliver it to market we will be putting all our investment resources into this year. Developing our own harvesting system is our goal as well as expanding our market. We look forward to taking you with us as we move forward. Thanks as always for following us. If you want more up to date information follow us on twitter @britishseabuck or on facebook or Instagram by searching for the British Sea Buckthorn Company.

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Happy new year

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One usually looks forward with optimism on the first day of the year. For us this year is based on work done from June 2017 onwards. The results of the 2017 harvest provided a blue print of what needs to be done to deliver success in 2018. Through autumn 2017 and right up to Christmas the plan developed as to how to harvest, process and market our sea buckthorn.

This coincided with successful acceptance of our application to put around 125 hectares of the farm into a new five year Countryside Stewardship (CS) scheme. This environmental scheme will extend and improve works that have been building bird breeding habitats on our farm over the past ten years. The security of this agreement means that we can budget for the design and development work of the harvesting machinery needed for 2018.

The land involved in the CS agreement lies behind the Naze cliffs at Walton on the Naze. The sea has been eroding these cliffs at a rate of between 1-1.5m per year. This year is critical because the cliffs have almost completely eroded away in front of our land. In 2008 and 2011 a clay bund was placed against the back of the cliffs to re-inforce them, but this is now almost gone. Over 2017 we have partnered with local government, the Environment Agency and Anglian Water to build a new wall to protect both our land and the Anglian Water Treatment works that both stand at risk from flooding. If the sea breaks through, our five year CS agreement and the land will be lost. Hopefully it will be a “happy new year” and 2018 will see this protection wall built – as it represents a risk to both the land involved and funding security for the sea buckthorn.

Developing the funding for the new harvesting equipment has involved making an application for LEADER funding. This is EU funding, distributed through the North Essex and Suffolk area to support rural business development. In 2013 and 2015 the farm was involved in two EU funding bids with European sea buckthorn partners. The amount of work is massive and often to tight deadlines. This LEADER application is no exception, but the process has real value in questioning ideas and developing a more robust business plan. The need for funding support for our harvesting equipment will allow our own funds to go further and allow them to progress the plant trials that we are planning to develop with NIAB East Malling Research over the next three years.

Having now grown our Siberian sea buckthorn we now need to quantify our methods and improve them so that the resultant crop has consistent quality. The branch cutting harvesting process is a novel system that requires plants to rejuvenate rapidly to produce new branches so we can harvest on a three year cycle. Branch rejuvenation will need the right foliar fertilisers and management to minimise plant stress that might bring on plant disease.

The unpredictability of weather is also a concern. Long dry periods may be a cause of berries being smaller than average and also impact on variable ripening times. We need to look at possible low level irrigation below harvest to prevent such weather extremes from becoming a regular problem.

Understanding which varieties are best suited to our climate and soils is crucial to developing these plants into a commercial crop of the future. Our organic management will need to identify which varieties respond to these management methods, which yield best and which have the qualities that match market needs.

All of these issues will take a minimum of three years to define, but once achieved we can progress the crop with confidence.

This is not to say that we will not be expanding planting this year. As we enter the market in 2018, we need to increase the size of our orchard for the future. It takes four years to bring plants to fruit. The current orchard has plants established annually from 2011 through to 2015 so yield will be increasing to a peak in 2021/22. Plants established in 2018 will build on the current 4000 plant stock and provide for a growing market through into the next decade.

Alongside new plants will come a specialist tractor and weeding cultivator to mechanise field work. Machinery will not be the only investment for 2018 as the potential of the 2018 crop will push our resources to the limit, so we will also be looking to recruit this year. Time is always a precious resource and ensuring we deliver our best crop will only come with attention to detail delivered by an expanding team.

So as January starts, it feels like 2018 is going to be a year to remember, and as I write this I wish everyone a happy, healthy and successful New Year for 2018.

David

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2018 Becoming a Practical Reality

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After two mild winters it is refreshing to have frosts appearing nightly. It is also good news to finally see some signs of movement in the Brexit negotiations. As a strong advocate of remaining in Europe I have to accept the outcome. In agriculture it poses threats to how we trade and the need for seasonal workers. With threat comes fear which is not always justified but when there is nothing else to do but wait it is better to be positive and optimistic.

Autumn is a busy time for farming, but for our sea buckthorn project this seems to have been a particularly focused season of activity. At harvest is was disappointing to decide not to pick the crop. Variable size of berries, realisation that our harvest is both early ( July) and short ( one month ) brought home the scale of the task ahead to perfect the growing of our Siberian plants.

The trip to Siberia in September, followed by visiting the Euroworks conference in Warsaw in October provided a number of answers to how we need to solve some of the issues presented from the 2017 harvest. Finding solutions may be progress but implementing them is another. It is now essential that not only do we find solutions, but they are all implemented so that we have a successful harvest in July 2018 to take to market.

It is remarkable sometimes how opportunity arrives out of the blue that helps this progression.

When you are a very small business, time is one of the most important resources. Basic field work such as mowing and strimming to control weeds has been a daily task over the summers of the past four years. It has therefore been a huge relief to find a tractor and Ladurna cultivator that will revolutionise our field work for this coming season. The cultivator is small and specialist but works like a small, shallow rotovator, clawing out the weeds next to the plants. This year it will need to be used multiple times to get on top of our broad leaved weed population but I am hopeful in future years the problem will recede.

The fact we had variation in size and ripeness of berries this harvest will be solvable, but we need to be methodical in perfecting the combination of management that reduces the problem. The berries Ben and I saw in Siberia were huge – the size of olives. I am not sure we can aspire to this, as our soil and climate cannot be altered, but we can alter compost and foliar feed management, and possibly use a targeted, limited use of irrigation. NIAB East Malling Research have been contacted to help in this work and hopefully they will be able to help. It is hard to tell, but I suspect this is a 3 year project.

Field management is an issue but the greatest challenge right from the start of this project back in 2009 is the issue of finding an efficient harvesting system.

With only 4000 plants we are still a small operation. We have plans to grow more plants but expansion needs to wait until it is clear which varieties will provide the best crop for us. If we had 50 hectares – 60,000 plants then we could go to Germany to buy the Kranemann harvesting system, but the system needs this scale to be viable. It is however a great concept. We have seen it in operation in Germany, and we saw the concept of branch cutting is now accepted practice in Siberia.

Branch cutting as a means of harvesting has its drawbacks, particularly as branches cut take three years to recover. Cutting all the branches from a plant – as is the practice in Germany, means that you do not have a crop for another three years. It also works best with varieties that regrow rapidly. If we commit to this system we need to monitor our plants closely to see which varieties at Devereux farm have the ability for rapid regrowth.

Harvest 2017 practically proved to us that hand picking is too slow with our size of berries to be practical or economically viable. The alternative therefore is to build our own version of the German branch cutting system.

This will take time; need the right engineers and require funding.

To this end Ben and I are completely focused at the moment on raising the funding to develop this system. Grant funding is an option and following the acceptance of an Expression of Interest for help from our local Heritage Coast LEADER team we are filling out a grant application system to part fund the development of the harvesting system.

These grants are designed to promote rural economies and employment. Developing the harvesting system is our key to being able to bring a crop of the right quality to market. It also triggers the process for starting to develop products. Once we enter the market we will need to expand the orchard. This whole process means we will start to need staff. When this happens we can start to say that the Devereux sea buckthorn project is working.

I still consider it to be a 20 year project – that being from the first plantings in 2009 of german and Finnish varieties, through to having a mature orchard annually providing a quality crop to the demands of a growing market. 2029 seems a long way off, but as we plan the developments for harvest 2018 it now all starts to seem practical.

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Networking and Whole Crop Potential for Natural Health Benefits

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Our sea buckthorn harvest this year seems to have generated a whirlwind of travelling. Maybe it was naive to consider that flying plants several thousand miles to a new growing environment was not going to create some ticklish problems, but all new enterprise is about challenge.

Harvestability is key to developing any crop. This has always been a key area for development with sea buckthorn. It has resulted in the development of whole crop branch cutting machinery in Germany and this concept is the one that we are following. This developed as the alternative to traditional handpicking.

Handpicking we tried this year, but the berries were just too small to make this viable. It is standard practice in Siberia, and Ben and I watched it last month on a farm with over 700 hectares of sea buckthorn. The secret was the pickers were dealing with large berries on very mature plants. Their berries were the size of olives. They were also being picked for oil which meant that they could be picked slightly under ripe, so they were still firm.

Our trip to Siberia has shown the shape, size, colour and taste that our Siberian varieties should look like. It has turned out that we are not the only one’s with this problem.

Last week was the biannual Euroworks workshop. This year is was in Pruszkow, Poland. It was well attended as usual with delegates from Scandinavia, central and Eastern Europe and Russia. The networking opportunity of these events is invaluable. The interest in sea buckthorn is expanding and this year Rumania was well represented indicating an impressive level of investment. This has developed out of local recognition of the health benefits of taking sea buckthorn, particularly in reducing the level of winter colds in schools.

One of the presentations on Friday was from Humboldt university doing trials on Siberian varieties like ours. As previous trials in the Baltic have resulted failed with these varieties there has been a preference to use local and German plants. The Humboldt trial cleverly looks at grafting siberian stock onto german Leikora variety rootstock. The growth rates recorded showed a significant improvement with the grafted plants as opposed to whole Siberian plants.

The issue that has been recorded however is small berries – just like ours. This factor was also confirmed in some trial plants being grown in Greece.

Siberian plants have a number of advantages over European – thornless, berries with natural sugars that reduce the traditional sour taste, but large berries are a key characteristic.

I had the opportunity to have long discussions with sea buckthorn agronomists from Sweden and Germany and clearly we need to take a scientific approach to solving this problem. It could be an issue of maturity of plants, but this is unlikely to be the driving factor. Our use of foliar feeds, irrigation, soil type, soil fertility are all variables that may adjust berry size back to normal.

Ambient temperature always was going to be an issue. The cold winters in Siberia are a factor, but the fact that we have had some long dry periods may be causing some changes in characteristics. I have noticed a secondary pollination producing a few green berries in late August. This has also been noted in Greece. It has been suggested that this is a response to both heat and dry conditions making the plant feel it has been through a false dormancy.

The result of all this means we need to design a trial, measuring the impact on yield and plant growth of different levels of foliar feeds, composts and irrigation. I am hopeful that we will find a UK horticultural or agricultural institute to help in the trials and well as linking ours with the work being done in Humboldt.

These trials will be an ideal focus to then monitor and analyse the impact of branch cutting as a harvesting method. The German harvest system cuts all the branches of a plant using a large mechanical harvester. Berries grow on last year’s wood, so this method means that the plant takes three years to regrow sufficiently between crops. It is efficient and economical but means that you need three times as many plants as you would do if you picked every year.

An alternative would be to just cut one third of the branches on each bush. This will be our way forward. It raises the problem though of encouraging the principle pest of sea buckthorn – the sea buckthorn fly – Rhagoletis batava. This has the capacity to damage up to half the crop. It has been found in Germany in 2013/14 having migrated across from Asia. Our trials need to also look to finding ways of designing a growing and harvesting process that offers a minimum of fruit to the fly when it is active.

Trials are part of the process of developing a crop, but we have also to make the whole project here at Devereux farm viable. Next year we have to produce a crop and develop it into a product. Euroworks provided an insight into new sea buckthorn product developments in Europe. An EU funded project, investigating how extracts from sea buckthorn leaves can inhibit the harmful impacts of the consumption of red meat. The results of this project coming to fruition next March. Another presentation focused on Allantoin, a phtyochemical that is being isolated as providing the rapid wound healing properties long recognised as a sea buckthorn property. Work on the presence of natural serotonin in the bark of sea buckthorn progresses. Research both from Russia and Germany is focusing on extraction techniques. One of the long term objectives of the sea buckthorn industry has been to find value in the complete plant – the fruit, leaves and wood. Sea buckthorn has long been recognised for its health benefits – the work on allantoin and serotonin are both specific examples of where developing this perennial, sustainable crop is taking us.