Blog

Springtime is upon us and with it my seabuckthorn plants are in leaf and starting to extend new shoots – so all is well.

In response this week they have all had a dose of seaweed. This follows on from the organic plant feed pellets that they had two weeks ago. So the purpose of the seaweed is to provide a micronutrients to improve health and reduce stress. This is particularly important since last year’s disease outbreak remains fully diagnosed and most probably developed as a response to stress.
As I spray with a knapsack sprayer I have said before the advantage is that every plant is visited. I have come across five plants that had the disease last year and are showing signs again. The first two have been pruned back. The other three are not showing significant symptoms. They are in the area that started with the problems last year and again this is with Elizaveta. Having said that the other Elizaveta neighbouring the suspects are fine and healthy so with tight management I am hoping that the issues will remain under control.

In terms of the application of the seaweed I am using Symbio super concentrated 50% liquiud seaweed. The product is much thicker than the one I used last year. I am applying at a rate of 40:1, with one 10lt knapsack full covering up to 250 2 year old plants. The same 10lt probably covers 100 of the 2011 planting. I am finding that in an hour I can cover around 200/250 plants per hour.

I have to add that since I started writing this blog I have been watching the plants and although they have not been scorched by the seaweed application we have now had 14 days of dry and warm/hot weather. The plants are not showing signs of growth and another time in dry weather I might reduce the concentration of these regular feeds.

The other current job is weeding. two weeks of dry weather are starting to bake the ground hard. Consequently I would expect to hoe one row of 90 plants in an hour. This is dependent upon the amount of thistles in the rows. There are increasing numbers of creeping thistle and I need to get on top of it before is spreads out of control.
I had thought that weeding would have been a job for twice a fortnight but it is now becoming a daily job.

As the ground is drying it is also going to be fit enough to have lorry deliveries of compost. As I am weeding I notice how much moisture there is where there are broadleaved weeds around the plants. Where the ground is bare or just has some grass tussocks – the ground is hard. This is a driver to get on with putting compost around the plants in order to retain some upper soil moisture as well as mulch the weeds.

It is remarkable how much time it takes to maintain control on just 5000 plants when it is organic and reduced to hand maintenance. I have a helper now doing 14 hours a week. so that will see some of this work under control.

The next priority is to have a fixed plan as to how to harvest and handle the coming harvest. It might be small but it still needs to be managed to retain optimum quality. So that’s the brain work for the current month and the muscle work as well.

The last month seems to have flown by driven by the knowledge that everything is starting to grow and a determination to keep on top of weeds this year. The commitment to growing seabuckthorn organically comes at a cost. It would be so simple to go along the rows with a knapsack sprayer, spraying Roundup spray around each plant and move onto the next problem content that weed competition was not going to be a problem. But the knowledge that the end market for my seabuckthorn is a UK consumer that will be focusing on it being natural and healthy is my driver. In reality weeding is not so much of an issue. Walking the rows with a row and cutting out broadleaved weeds is quick – a full day covering almost 2000 plants. It will become less of a job as more plants are mulched with compost.

I am still waiting for the ground to become dry enough to have lorry loads of compost delivered to the field. A 13 ton load delivered in an 8 wheeled lorry is a recipe for disaster as the surface of the ground is soft and a large lorry once stuck creates more mess than the job is worth. Another three weeks hopefully and I will have a delivery and over the next month/six weeks all plants will be mulched. It still being a job done by small trailer and shovel I am looking forward to a future of more mechanisation. But that will only come once I have berries providing an income to buy the right tractor/loader/trailer/compost dispenser/etc.

One of the advantages of slower manual processes is that it gives time to regular inspection of all plants. So it was with dismay last week when weeding down the rows that I came across two plants showing signs of leaf wilt.

Experience from last year tells me now to be as worried as the plants will survive .But  I do know that certain varieties are more susceptible that others and that it will kill branches if allowed to go unchecked. With only two plants involved I have pruned the branches showing problems and burnt them. I hope now that that might be the end of it, but I doubt it.

All plants have had a feed of either 150gm/plant or 200gm/plant of Greenvale Plant pellets. Having seaweeded all plants three weeks ago, they will have another dose this week. This will be followed by compost tea, having had a lesson in the process.

Farming is a job that relates as much to the office as to the field. Unfortunately as spring field work is demanding, so paperwork tends to build. Paperwork is not just routine but in the planning of where the seabuckthorn project is going. This year there will be a small harvest. I have this year to develop a simple and improved harvesting tool: Develop a number of areas within the plantations on different management treatments that might influence berry quality; and quantify what quality means in my berries and how the market perceives them.

The first communication paper has come from Finland for this year’s Euroworks 2014 conference on seabuckthorn. The conference themes are pests/diseases; cultivation technology and meeting the needs of growers; and the quality of seabuckthorn. Everyone is starting to focus on this issue which is as good for the consumer as it is for the grower. If seabuckthorn quality can be standardised then growers will focus on achieving and improving on the standards that deliver the benefits that consumers are looking for. Quality standards may be targeted at harvesting standards that minimise damage to the crop; standards that minimise disease damage within the crop so that berries are uniform in size/shape.; standards may be set for nutrient levels that provide market/consumer benefit. All these are valid, but they must be consistently deliverable to be worthwhile.

Next week there is the Natural and Organic Products Show on in London. These events are useful in terms of seing what the competition is up to. This year will provide an opportunity to go around and start to generate some interest in seabuckthorn now that a real crop is on the way. Part of the information I need is to know what processors want in seabuckthorn; what levels of nutrients they look for; which nutrients are topical.

Two weeks ago a group of foreign visitors came to the farm which presented an opportunity to make some product. Some of the juice options; jams; frozen sweet products and savoury concepts were put to the test. These were devised by my daughter whose creative culinary skills filled a table with products that passed the taste test. Seeing is believing and tasting is the best way for people to be convinced that seabuckthorn tastes as good as its excellence in nutritional content. So some of these tasty testers will be going to the Natural and Organics Show. That will start to give some real feedback.

So its back to the field now – go and check that all is fit and healthy.

Thank you for reading – comments always appreciated.

There are those that will call organic farming an ethos; a committment; a belief. To some one that has a conventional farm I see it as a move that needs to be taken in determined but considered steps. Farming is a business and has to make profit to survive. I saw last year the impact of disease in my seabuckthorn and my committment to going organic has to be in the understanding that I can produce a viable and quality crop. The desire to go organic is driven by a recognition that our soil is precious and that a healthy soil is one of the principle keys to sustainable farming in the future.

Seabuckthorn is a fruit crop. Potentially it is also a leaf crop and both of these will be used in food products. As seabuckthorn is a new product to the UK fresh market I believe that offering it in an organic form offers the consumer the reassurance that as a natural product it is naturally produced. It is a simple and unambiguous message. Seabuckthorn – the natural European superfruit.

So my first step into the process has not been to register as organic but to have the soil tested with a biological analysis. My soil, as I have often said is heavy clay. Being close to the sea the water table in winter is often quite high which makes working difficult and not very suitable for seabuckthorn. Temperature and water logging will alter the results of these analyses so i am proposing to have three tests done this year and build up an idea of how health my soil is and how to improve it.

The first tests have come back with bacterial activity above average with a good bacterial diversity. Conversely fungal activity is low, but the samples were taken in February so maybe this may be a seasonal issue. There is a good fungal biomass. Amoebae and ciliates came out high, but low in total flagellates. Nematodes also recorded as low. Now I have to admit to being new to this form of analysis. What I do like however is that it provides a definition of my soil health and how the actions that I take are improving it.

The process will require continued doses of compost that will gradually wash into the soil and feed the bacteria and fungi improving the nutrient release into the soil that the seabuckthorn plants can take up. Added to this the use of compost tea and foliar feeds of seaweed. Compost tea is low in NPK, along with the seaweed there is a provision for a broader range of trace elements that are absent from conventional fertilisers.

Seabuckthorn is a nitrogen fixer. That is fine for a wild plant but when I am expecting my plants to produce 10-15kg of berries they must have sufficent nutrients for the plant to grow, be healthy and produce the yield. Going organic is not just going organic. In my view it is more important to focus on creating a form of agronomy that is sustainable. By sustianable I mean having little reliance upon importing inputs to grow and manage the crop. So far my plants are growing on three doses  of 200gm of chicken pellets with an analysis of 4.5;3.5;2.5. They then have seaweed for trace elements and a thick compost mulch. It has had its flaws in that this winter-having been so wet has seen some plants emerge looking a little lean. In particular Elizaveta, which is the fastest growing variety here has a lack of colour in the leaf.

The compost tea maker has now arrived. All the Siberian plants are in partial leaf and have had a dose of seaweed. This seems to be a characteristic of Siuberian varieties here. They start to show leaf in january, then gradually come into leaf over the next ten weeks. Whereas my German/Finnish /Latvian varieties do not break bud until mid-March and I expect by next week will be well covered with new leaf. So these European varieties will have a dose of seaweed next week, while I get the compost tea maker working.

As a trial farm I will keep an area for varied fertiliser applications. This programme i will have to work out in the next couple of weeks.

I am well aware that I have not blogged for a while. The last month has been intense with planting. Priority then was to mow the whole site both between the rows and between the plants. This will become less of an operation once i have composted all the plants. Having been such a wet winter the composting has fallen behind as a job because lorries delivering the compost could not tip near enough to the field to be practical. I am hoping that in another two weeks the ground will be hard enough for this to change. 

On a final note, I have been watching the Linkedin Sustainable farming network. One of the questions in the last couple of weeks was “how do you attract the next generation into farming?”. 

It is an interesting question because the world needs food and the average age of farmers seems to be going up and up. Food has to be affordable for consumers, but income has to be attractive to make farming sustainable. Hours are long, but then so they can be in industry/finance/professional jobs. The environment one works in I feel is an important factor. But actually it has to come back to reward for the work you put it. Reward that keeps your family and the bank manager content.  That is why I feel seabuckthorn has attractions. Grown as a commodity it is little different to any other crop. Developed with on-farm/co-operative processing to provide a short supply chain to the end consumer then there is an opportunity for the work input to be rewarded with the income that balances the risks and the long term investment needed.

It is remarkable how life can change. There has now been ten days of dry, sunny weather. The nights remain around 4-6 deg, day temperature starting to climb and the ground is drying fast. Not only does the seabuckthorn site look better, it makes working so much easier.

Of the plants that were imported from Lisavenko in November some have gone to other sites. The nest priority has been to infill plants that have died. These are either first year plants that have not survived the wet winter; or those that suffered fungal disease last year. There were very few lost to the disease, most have had to be replaced because I cut them back to hard.

Of the first year plants I have had to replace 11% of Jessel; 10% Elizaveta; 6% Klaudia; 5% Augustina; 4% Dewdrop (Rosinka). To the disease area which were plants established in 2011 – Elizaveta 26%; Chuiskaya 15%; Klaudia 18%; Sudarushka 18%  Altaiskaya 4% ; Inya 8%. Elizaveta certainly was affected worst, but it is a vigourous growing variety here on my farm. The Altaiskaya figures I would suggest indicate they have come through the season well – so maybe one can attribute that to a level of resistance.

New planting this year will focus on a block planting of Altaiskaya. My attraction to it as a variety is its declared figures for sugar (9.7%)/ acid (1.1%); a good oil content (7%); average vitamin C (98mg/100g). It has a medium sized berry at 75g/100 berries, and a declared yield of 13t/hectare. I still like Elizaveta for its large berry size (100g/100 fruit), and its vigourous growth.

 It will be interesting to compare the declared figures with actual analysis figures when these varieties produce their first few berries this year.

Muntjac deer are starting to become a concern. A camera was installed this month in a lane between the two seabuckthorn fields and it caught a regular visit from these little deer. They have been in both fields and just nibble the ends of the branches. They started to tear at the bark in the winter, but I have stopped that by fitting the plants with rabbit guards.

I have bought a compost tea maker as a means of applying both a foliar feed and a level of anti-microbial action against fungal disease. This has not come yet so i am going to apply an application of seaweed to start the season off. This will be applied next week, once the planting is completed.

Actually it won’t be totally completed. One new site is too wet and has some weed contamination which I want to get on top of before planting. I still have not completed by organic farming registration yet – although it is a priority for this month. As i look at the forms on my desk I also consider how best to control the nettles in this site. Do I spray or not? As a conventional farmer i should have no issue but do it. But I am also sympathetic to soil health management and using any chemical runs against the grain. It is also an issue when controlling weeds around plants. I am not convinced that mulches of compost are going to prevent weed growth around plants. Limit their growth maybe, but not a total elimination.

Not controlling weed growth has certainly reduced the plants growth, but they are all successfully getting away now. 

I have had my soil sampled  for biological health and the results should be back very soon which will be the measure by which I start to develop my compost development. 

As i came off the field tonight I noticed that of the four Latvian varieties on the farm ( Goldrain; Tatjana; Mary; Sunny ) Sunny is starting to open some buds together with a few Goldrain. The plants have developed well with very few losses. They were planted in 2012 so it will still be another year before i see any berries to compare with the Siberian varieties.

The other bit of news was the announcement of the Euroworks conference that is this year to be held in Finland. It provides a valuable opportunity to network with other seabuckthorn growers, processors and researchers. It will also be an opportunity to push the debate for the establishment of quality standards for seabuckthorn berry production.

So it really feels as if 2014 is now underway. A year that is important for British Seabuckthorn as it will be the first year of producing some seabuckthorn berries off a UK farm. 

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.  

As I start a new year I have set some challenges based on where this seabuckthorn project is going.

I am concerned that as a farmer I will be producing seabuckthorn as a commodity. A commodity which is basically just a berry – or products from a berry. A commodity that tells the customer very little about the reality of what they are buying.

When you search the internet there is so much generic knowledge being published. So much is sometimes too much. There are so many benefits; so many nutrients; but how does this relate to my crop, my berries, my potential products?

I take seabuckthorn capsules and I believe that I get a real benefit in terms of better general health, keeping common ailments away and most of all I believe that I seem to have better stamina to do the job I do. All of this is personal reference. It is how I feel. it is not medically verified, but I do genuinely believe that these outcomes are as a result of taking the capsules. I suppose it is also put to the test because when I stop taking them these ailments are a problem.

But as a potential manufacturer and salesman of my products how can I say to a customer – it will do this; I can guaranteed it will help you because it has certain nutrients in it.and so on.

I can analyse my berries and know what a particular crop/variety that year has in it. But we come back to the problem that seabuckthorn is a composite of 190 or so nutrients. Nutrients that individually may be recognised as having a beneift to a consumer. But put those nutrients into a mix – a stock pot as it is sometimes called, and we have a mix of or synergy of benefits that are not predictable. Add to that I am growing over twenty varieties each of which genetically bred to provide different outputs, plus the fact that every year the weather will influence the concentrations of nutirents in the berry – and all of a sudden we have too many variables.

The New Nutrition Business analyses the food and drink sector each year and reports their findings as the top 12 trends that the market is looking for.

Top of the list this year is “Naturally functional”. I see this as encompassing what seabuckthorn is. A natural product that is high in many nutrients – nutrients that consumers accept as being good for them.

So should I or should I not get hung up on the science and the need to prove the science to say my seabuckthorn will deliver a benefit to my potential customer?

In legal terms I cannot say what these benefits are anyway unless these are proven through the European Food Safety agency system. A very expensive process which is also extremely difficult if the outcome that is being suggested is derived from a natural product which has many variable nutrients and synergies.

But as a grower I want to make sure that I am growing the crop to the best of my ability and that this dleivers what the customer wants. So there is a need to isolate the nutrients of interest that I can manage in the berry through crop management.

The issue will be to find out this year which nutrient or group of nutrients can be produced to an optimum quality, consistently in my crop. I also need to assess whether the concentrations of each nutrient are high enough to be relevant to providing a useful function.

It is always of course possible to add vitamins, nutrients to a product to provide consumer beneifts that they associate with it. But that is neither natural, nor is it what the consumer expects from a crop that is reported all over the internet as being a source of many nutrients.

The work will be done with a UK university and referred to other European institutes with an interest in seabuckthorn. Hopefully the end result will have identified better crop management, better understanding of UK seabuckthorn and a better understanding of how that matches consumer demands and needs. Like all research work it might not be conclusive, but if one does not seek to understand then how can one improve.

At the moment a little knowledge is dangerous. My berries will have a mix of the nutrients mentioned in internet media – but does that relate to consumer need?

Confidence is a remarkable trait. It is a psychological boost based on how you feel about yourself and what is going on around you.

My 14 year old son goes off to his school bus at 7am. As we went outside the dawn was just starting. It had been raining overnight, so the air was clean and crisp. However, what made me smile was the bird song was loud, strong and confident. Although those birds had gone through a night of heavy rain and col; although they had to forage for their food – their take on the world was good. Good for them – and good for me.

Last night I was looking for some research papers and diverted to have a look at the New Nutrition business website. Julian Mellentin is a highly respected analyst in the food and drink sector. Each year he publishes the top 12 trends that are coming out of the food/drink sector. This year the top trend of the 12 is – “Naturally functional”. Foods and drink products that offer a need and benefit for the consumer  that is sourced from ingredients that are natural not processed.Naturally functional means that the product does not rely on being fortified with added nutrients to make it provide benefit. It means that the product has been well made so that the natural nutrients in the ingredients have not been degraded in the making of the product. When I read this – it raised my confidence. This is the year of the Horse- so maybe it is also the year of the Shiny Horse, Hippophae.

Fieldwork continues – more pruning and staking plants onto canes. Providing stakes to help support plants might seem obvious, but originally I did not plant my seabuckthorn out and tie it to a cane for support. The reason mainly being cost. Each cane was about 7p as a 3ft cane, and I have to keep my costs to a minimum.

The site I have at Devereux farm is on the coast so we have strong winter winds. Rain is also a constant winter feature and this makes the clay soil soft. The plants are blown backwards and forwards and gradually the soil around the stem molds into a hole around it so that it provides no support for the plant. As plants grow larger this problem gets worse. Each year i have given a cane to those plants that were suffering worst from being blown about. Now I am biting the bullet and giving them all a 4ft (18/20lb) cane, tied to the plant with Easi tie cord. Easi tie I buy from Farm Forestry. It is made of soft rubber and therefore I believe it does not rub the bark of the plants to much. It is always a concern that the cord will damage the plant, But I hope that I will find that the support is more of a benefit than a problem.

Climate change is an emotive subject, but we do suffer from increasing incidents of heavy downpours of rain and sharp squalls of wind. The worst of these justs of wind may last no more than 20 minutes but I have found that the middle sized German plants also suffer from these 70-80mph gusts. These plants went in in 2009, I took away their support stakes in 2012, but this year I will need to give them some back to straighten some that have been blown sideways.

Last year I was contacted by Richard Hogan and Andy White in Ireland to say that their seabuckthorn business was being closed down by the Irish government. The government view was that seabuckthorn was non a native and that it was an invasive species that threatened habitats protected under the EU Habitats Directive.

Yesterday must have been a productive day. Again the internet revealed a report on manageing seabuckthorn in dune habitats here in the UK. The UK Department of Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has seabuckthorn listed as an invasive species. Since the 1970 it has been seen as a threat to sand dune habitats. Now however UK conservationists are seeing that some of the dune habitats where the seabuckthorn is growing are infact an interesting habitat all of their own. A habitat that is worth managing and studying to understand its value. Andy is going to post the report on his Irish seabuckthorn website – its worth a look.

Different subject – statistics – they can be viewed many ways. Himalayan seabuckthorn grows up to 5000m in these mountainous regions. These areas are also the habitat of the tiger. The tiger that we see being pushed to extinction.

I saw on the World Wildlife Fund webmail this morning that in Nepal the population of tigers has gone up 60%. This relates to 200 tigers. In the same WWF mailing it also shows that mountain gorillas have gone up from 680 to 880 – also 200 of these iconic creatures. The sad thing is that this success is within two protected strongholds within a country where 400 people in every square kilometre are trying to live. Habitat loss is the cuase of so many of these issues. Our UK farm bird population has crashed over past decades as our farming methods have not provided space for refuge/feed/water. This is a reality but it is more than sad.

As populations grow we squeeze out wildlife. The relentless growth of the global population, the needs is demands has to at some stage relate to reality. That production resources are finite. The loss of species is a tragedy, but it is also an indication that what we do must start to become sustainable. Production sustainability at all levels is staring to become possible as technology improves efficiency and monitoring equipment allows for management of resources.

Production sustainability is good for the environment – it also makes commercial sense. The technology reduces input resource use which reduces costs. It improves processing output quality. Julian Mellentin is saying that this is the year of Naturally functional foods. It indicates that the market values the natural goodness. Natural goodness that we have to define to ensure it is fully understood and becomes a market driver.

We need to define the nutrients in seabuckthorn that make up this natural functionality. We need to define what the natural functionality is in seabuckthorn that is valued by the customer. We need to define which nutrients drive the natural functionality that the consumer wants. Finally we need to understand how we grow seabuckthorn to provide the market with a consistent quality that represents that natural functionality.

Put all this together – sustainable production methods of a crop that is undemanding of its environment, producing a natural product that delivers the benefits that the consumer is demanding and we have a perfect formula for a naturally functional food business. What is more is that if this formula is followed it produces product and producer image to the consumer that is based on quality and integrity. Both of these create premium returns which make it all worthwhile.

Its still January – so I can still say – Happy New year.

This blog continues to follow the progress of growing seabuckthorn at Devereux farm. From November 2011 until now monthly updates have been on the family farm’s website – ( www.onthewildsideproducts.co.uk ). The change is appropriate as the seabuckthorn plants at Devereux are now successfully established and a more focused blog site seemed appropriate.

For those that have not been following this project – the concept of growing seabuckthorn was conceived in 2006. The farm needed a new enterprise that would provide economic growth through the ability to add value with on-farm processing. The farm has been in the Eagle family since 1921, although it was rented before then. With 600 acres of arable land on the Essex coast adjacent to the very beautiful Hamford Water National Nature reserve, it is coming under increasing threat from tidal flooding.

The East coast of the UK was substantially flooded in 1953. Half of our farm was flooded then, following which the seawalls were raised to 5m high. Recent surge tides have brought the sea level close to the top of even this wall height. Government support for seawall maintenance has been falling year on year. It is widely recognised that a repetition of the 1953 flood is not a matter of if it will happen again – but when it will happen. Climate change, whether man made or a natural cycle is happening and with it increased sea storminess and the potential of long term sea level rise. So investing in a high value crop that  requires a small area of the farm is a response to both the need to give the farm business an opportunity to grow and absorb the risk of losing land to the sea in the future.

The seabuckthorn project started with the support of the InCrops Enterprise hub, based at the University of East Anglia. In 2009, Dr Mark Coleman from InCrops and I attended the International Seabuckthorn Conference in Belokurika, Siberia. Following on from that, InCrops formed a collaborative agreement with the Lisavenko Institute of Horticulture for Siberia. Lisavenko started developing commercial seabuckthorn breeding in 1933 from the local Altai wild stock. This makes them the foremost breeder of seabuckthorn worldwide.

The collaborative agreement allowed the supply of Lisavenko varieties to be supplied to set up trial sites in the UK to test the viability of growing Siberian seabuckthorn as a commercial crop. The condition being that these plants were for crop trials and there should be no propagation or breeding work without prior agreement .

Prior to this, in 2009 we had planted 150 mixed German and Finnish varieties at Devereux farm. This included seven German and three Finnish female varieties.

In 2010 the first shipment of seven Siberian female varieties arrived, to be established on two sites – Devereux farm and one in Thetford Forest. Each year following this there has been a further importation of plants. Two further locations have been established. Additional Siberian varieties have been added to bring the total to ten.

In 2012 400 Latvian plants were imported representing four varieties. It has been widely reported that Siberian varieties had been susceptible to a fatal disease in the Baltic States several years ago. Planting Siberian seabuckthorn carried risks as our fam soil is heavy clay and our winter temperatures are mild. So these environmental challenges to the imported plants may create threats to the plant vitality which are not predictable. Growing European varieties from Germany, Scandanavia and the Baltic spread the risks to the success of the project.

In 2014 plant numbers will rise to 5000 at Devereux farm. The German plants have been producing berries since 2012,  I am hoping that this year will be the first year for the Siberian plants to produce enough berries to analyse for quality.

Quality is my goal. With seabuckthorn quality is governed by choice of variety; environmental conditions; crop management; harvesting efficiency; post harvest handling and processing. At each stage there are opportunities for quality changes.

The question is – what is quality? When growing wheat or other commonly grown crops the market need dictates the optimum qualities needed to aid processing of a food product. With seabuckthorn the market is poorly established. Growers and researchers define the common phtyo-chemicals found in seabuckthorn – flavonoids, polyphenols, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals. Marketing statements are made that suggest the health benefits that have been associated with seabuckthorn. The products from seabuckthorn are still sold as commodities without standardised qualities that define specific use.

In 2012 we sponsored a meta-analysis of the benefits of seabuckthorn for cardio vascular diseases, undertaken by the Medical Research Council. It is clear that research is extensive but lack of funding does not seem to generate  clinical trials  that provide conclusive cause and effect results to substantiate specific health claims.

Having taken seabuckthorn oil capsules since September 2009 I firmly beieve that seabuckthorn provides overal improvement to my personal health. A number of friends have also taken up the product and report, less winter cold issues. But this is not a process that satisfies the European Food Safety Agency to allow a health claim under the Nutrition and Health Claims regulations.

So without the evidence to link a particular benefit to a particular compound it is difficult to specify which of the 190+ nutrients identified are the most beneficial and can therefore donate the quality of a berry. To the grower, specified quality is normally associated with the price per kilo. If you cannot specify quality then the crop becomes a commodity and the price is governed by global availability.

Until we can define quality the returns on growing seabuckthorn will not necessarily reflect the amount of work that goes into growing and harvesting the crop. It also means that unless there is specific agronomy research to identify how to improve flavonoid/polyphenol/fatty acid quantity the crop will remain based upon growing the best varieties available and as with all crops, hoping that the environmental conditions provide a perfect set of conditions to provide a good crop of clean berries.

Seabuckthorn is, in my view, a superfruit. It may not have unique compounds in it, but it is the way those compounds work in synergy with each other that matters. The modern consumer with access to the internet is sophisticated, educated and also cynical to false marketing. Those developing seabuckthorn for the market place need to quantify the compounds in the berry/leaf that will deliver consistent benefit to the consumer. Identifying those compounds will identify the often asked question – what is seabuckthorn. Furthermore it will be those compounds which will identify the quality that will substantiate the price for the grower’s crop.

Happy New Year.