In the Long Reeds
Organic farming in numbers: ►Number of organic producers in Ireland: 1,346 ►Hectares of land under organic production: 58,566 ►Sales of organic produce in Ireland for year ending November 2012: Overall market value of €100 million ►This is a decline in value of 3.5% compared to the previous year, although yoghurts, fresh meat and biscuits gained market share and demonstrated growth versus 2011 ►Figures show that shoppers buy organic produce on average 21 times a year ►91% of the population have bought organic with the majority buying an organic yoghurt ►Organic vegetables are the largest single market worth over €25 million ►Organic fruit is worth just over €8.5 million ►The typical spend on organic in 2012 last year was €66.40 €1.80 down on 2011
Source for number of organic producers and hectares: Teagasc Source for organic sales figures: Kantar Worldpanel
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to eight months before selling them to be “finished off ” or killed by these other buyers. One would think this would make his line of work less gruesome, but when I went to visit the farm in March, I was shocked to come across the lifeless body of a three-week old lamb in the stable. “He must have gotten crushed by the other sheep when they went to the trough to get their food,” Felix said, hunkering down, his bare hands covering the entire length of the little white body. Registering the look on my face, he added, “It’s a pity but this kind of thing happens in farming, organic and nonorganic. Even when you’re not finishing off the animals, you see a lot of death. It’s something you get used to.” To return to his financial difficulties,
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The environmental and economic costs of inputs required for conventional food production are staggering - Grace Maher
Felix says he is finding it increasingly difficult to justify the acquisition of expensive organic feed, which he feeds to his sheep before lambing, when customers are more reluctant to pay a higher cost for organic produce. “Organic feed is very expensive,” he told me. “A larger commercial farm would be able to make a worthwhile profit out of livestock but for me selling a few cows and sheep is not enough.” However, as for Pat Lalor, the environmental benefits of organic farming are a source of satisfaction to the young farmer. He does not use pesticides or fertilisers, though he admits he would like to when it comes to dealing with
the rush weeds that grow at a rapid pace in his fields, overshadowing the grass and preventing the sunlight from reaching it to enhance growth. Rush weeds are a professional hazard for farmers in Cavan as rain is so frequent. At the moment Felix has to cut down the weeds every day with his tractor, whereas a conventional farmer only has to spray the ground with chemicals. Untreated grass is the main food stuff for his lambs and calves, but this year the rush-weed problems were compounded by a particularly cold and snowy March, which prevented Felix from putting his lambs out to grass until mid-April. Felix attributed this delay to the death of the lamb we found in the stable. “If I’d been able to put them out earlier, that would never have happened.” Felix changes the straw beds for his sheep and cows regularly and, once they are put out into the fields, he does an intensive clean-up of their pen, which has also been delayed this year due to the snow. “It’s much better for the animals, the straw. On conventional farms they don’t have a soft bed to sleep on.” Back at the house, which displays many signs of the feminine influence in his life through the number of potted plants and well-thumbed cookery books dotted around the place, Felix hands me a thick tome from the Organic Trust (the certification body with which Corleggy Farm is registered) that lists all of the rules and regulations governing organic production. After the regulations are handed down from the EU through the Department, certification bodies such as IOFGA and the Organic Trust interpret the regulations in a “user-friendly” manner for their organic producers, and the result is the heavy folder handed to me over the lunch table. Over a delicious meal comprised of his own home-grown vegetables, warm crusty bread, and thick slices of smoked salmon, Felix agrees that most of the criticisms made of organic farming in this respect tend to be based on farms where regulations are improperly implemented. “If they’re not doing it properly then they should be penalised. But unfortunately these mavericks give the whole sector a bad name.”