organic farming

endainoz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119448739#Comment_119448739

Im still not sure of the ins and outs of it, but I like the idea of planting 0.5 ha of trees, comes up to nearly 2k I think. Low emission slurry spreading is probably one for everyone. I'm sure there's a limit on the amount of actions you can take but I haven't the patience at the moment to go through all the dept of AG jargon. Ag Advisor should know more about it now. But the idea of stacking payments is only a very recent addition.

If you just Google search ACRES scheme pdf you'll get the PDF about it.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119379619#Comment_119379619

Very hard to make money out of organics if you are buying and selling within twelve months. Unless your land was very poor quality you would be as well off in a standard agri system

Packrat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119448608#Comment_119448608

I just joined organic this year, - if we are going to be penalized like this in Acres for organic membership, it defeats their goal of increasing organic participation.

1st night completed of the Organic Course, a lot to ponder.

endainoz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456391#Comment_119456391

It's a good course in fairness, very informative.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456530#Comment_119456530

I agree, I got a lot of value for money tonight

893bet

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456391#Comment_119456391

Is there a link to the organic course you are doing?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456784#Comment_119456784

Yes & no, https://nots.ie/courses/

I'm doing the online course as their other courses are either in Leitrim or Tipperary neither of which suited me. AFAIK, this is the last online course and I got the last place! My normal timing.....

I imagine the same tutor will do the in person courses, or the Leitrim one at least, Andrew Chilton.

MIKEKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119447434#Comment_119447434

Having read the article in the journal I can't figure out how it can work.Each shareholder will have to take restoration actions and point out the location where the restoration will take place.Commonage is land farmed in common .Each shareholder can grass the whole area Now can anyone pick an area of their choice? Would be impossible to get shareholders to agree on anything. The majority of shareholders never go near the commonage and certainly won't do any work. The majority didn't comply with the Glad rules so the y are hardly going to go actually going to do any work. The big difference to Glad is the advisor will have to check that the work is done and upload photos to Dept site

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119463934#Comment_119463934

I haven't really looked much at ACRES tbh, such is my disinterest. I don't see much in the line of genuine wanting commonages to work tbh. I've pretty much decided I'll lease mine out, sick of the never ending pantomine, no regulator, no agreements like you say, they should be log split and privately fenced and consign commonage to history imo.

Packrat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119465724#Comment_119465724

Commonage is a bollocks whatever way you look at it. Agree that they should all have been divided long ago.

Half the lads using them not talking anyway which doesn't bode well for any "collaborative" measures.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119467132#Comment_119467132

Many are impossible to divide. Of you think it's hard to get agreement to draw up a commonage plan it would be impossible to divide many of them

Department should assign a planner to each commonage. Let them contact the individual farmers draw up a plan and if they want to follow it so be it. If not no payment.

They should set stocking rates and these should all that are allowed for nitrate purposes. If you are allowed 1 unit per HA then that is all you are allowed on nitrates

MIKEKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119467594#Comment_119467594

I agree there should be no payment if rules weren't followed. I imagine people will hope it's the same as Glas, very few inspections no stock out on commonage .everybody drew their fraudulent payment. No improvement in commonplace in 7 years

tanko

Are there any alternative fertilisers allowed to be used if in Organics?

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119467634#Comment_119467634

Basic slag it's very hard to spread filthy stuff. It gives lime effect on land. It's also provides trace elements mainly magnesium and sulphur with a bit of P.

There is some here in this link however I am unsure which are approved here

https://www.fruithillfarm.com/organic-soil-plant-fertilisers/granular-fertilizers.html#:~:text=The%20sources%20of%20the%20main,mineral%20fertilizer%20can%20be%20used.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119467594#Comment_119467594

Dept shouldn't assign a planner to each commonage. Similar was done in GLAS and the guy we were left stuck with, department approved!, shouldn't be allowed work in that job. He'd put indians to shame never mind cowboys.

The issue is the dept really don't give a fcuk.

Packrat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119467594#Comment_119467594

If who doesn't follow it? Who's payment is lost?

Should I suffer because my neighbour is cnut who doesn't care?

Its not only the payments side of it-

Putting in half the neighbours sheep in your gather and having to call them out first.

Your own sheep coming in with broken or pulled legs after his gather?

Some bollocks driving your sheep away to the bad end of it to keep the good side for his own?

Leaving Ram lambs out on the hill until October so you've a few nice early surprises out of hoggets or similar?

An absolute disaster from start to finish.

Commonage is a bollocks and should be divided by law without exception.

Nitrates derogations wouldn't affect too many of us with commonage i think.

This co-operation thing is a joke and rules quite a few of us including me out of Acres at all.

MIKEKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119469701#Comment_119469701

You could add the following to your list. In some areas came are left to hill in mid Nov and brought in mid Jan This means that anyone not letting one and a have year old to ram has to keep these in for two months.Even at this some fans are never got

MIKEKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119471036#Comment_119471036

Got my spelling wrong. Fans should be rams.New laptop thinks it knows my mind

endainoz

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/16/most-damaging-farm-products-organic-pasture-fed-beef-lamb

A nice Ire inducing article for you all to read

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119482803#Comment_119482803

His argument is rather blunt - shure there are problems in relation to approaches to livestock management in pasture settings(more so actually in Western Countries were tolerance of wildlife sharing farmland is often rather low regrettably). But I've seen myself first hand having visited the likes of Turkey and Kenya how extensive livestock rearing can work in harmony with nature, right up to the top of the food chain.

smallbeef

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119482803#Comment_119482803

What a heavily biased article. Typical of almost everything you read now about agriculture. All funded by WEF in some way, shape or form.

Cunw

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/16/most-damaging-farm-products-organic-pasture-fed-beef-lamb

"Organic beef farms, whose animals take longer to raise and need even more land, lose twice as much nitrogen for each kilo of meat as conventional beef farms."

The war on farming is targeting organic now 🙄

I think when the green gorillas have so radicalised as to delude and deny the link between food and survival of the species they are a force of almost evil.

Advocating for reductions in food supply is advocating for genocide with different semantics

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119483347#Comment_119483347

All farming is in the firing line, nevermind Milk and meat.

Organic, tillage, fruit etc etc.

Everyone gets a beating.

Siamsa Sessions

Is the anti-farming stuff reaching saturation point at this stage?

Surely even the 3-4% target audience (Green voters) must be getting bored with the same old sky-is-falling-in rants?

youllbemine

Is this aimed at 'Green voters' as you call them? I would say the actual target audience is almost an entire generation that are being bombarded with news like this on a daily basis.

The Guardian is a well respected news outlet read by many if my friends on a daily basis. In my opinion this is getting to the core of society, not some outliers. As has been said before, the mud will eventually stick.

If you have a debate with my friends (late 20s/early 30s) and for arguments sake take the view that farming is bad, they wouldn't be able to defend a position of eating meat and dairy. Their main argument would bethag we've always done it so why change. This somewhat proves (in my friend group at least but I'd imagine on a wider basis) that articles like the above are all that they see, not an alternative view that actually agriculture is what you need to have food on your table for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Agriland, IFJ, alternative news sources to the likes of The Guardian etc are not read by many outside of farming circles and are nkt exposed to the facts! Just constant crap that even takes aim at organic!

Siamsa Sessions

I agree - it’s intense and constant bombardment in some circles. But outside of that, how many will actually vote with their feet and switch away to become vegans? Or even to buy more lab-grown lard in their working shopping?

Not many I’d say

youllbemine

They're playing the long game, not the next election timeline. Young people's habits are different to people in their 30s and 40s. Change will come. At what expense I'm not sure. All I know is we'll be holding on to our few acres with two hands and not letting go!

His main goal is to end animal based agri using proteins made by bacteria.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6eaTIe_TBZA

Returning 3/4 of the worlds farmland to nature by rewinding sounds a tad ambitious.

Packrat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119486221#Comment_119486221

And in that goal he will fail.

Yes, he's adding more to the general ignorance of facts which is steadily growing, but he won't achieve his aim even if he lives to be a hundred.

One fairly serious famine where several millions or tens of millions die of starvation anywhere on this globe and his bullshit is over. There'll be such an about turn that peoples heads will spin.

Humans are nothing if not selfish and self-centered.