organic farming

Yes you are correct in that a priemum price is required for organic beef but you must realise that we are going through extrordinary times re conventional beef prices at the moment.

Anyone else experience this. I've a good few ewes with twins not coming to the trough. I'm feeding combi crop oats, barley, peas. Never happened when I was feeding conventional feeds with or without molasses. A ewe might stay away from the trough for a day or two around when she'd lamb but there's over a third of the flock not coming now.

I was on an organic farm last week 20 suckers ,10 yierling heifers on about 90 goodish acres farm ,organic with 10 years ,I never saw such a nice farm as barren. I would say it would be June before cattle would have grass .

Don't know what some fools here be saying that land adapts after a few years with out fertiliser,I can clearly see this farmer going broke if he dont change back and he would seem to be a good farmer but I saw more clover growing on my own bit of land probably index1 and low ph to boot.

Grass fine here anyway, still on first rotation. Grass is slow everywhere is see around here anyway, bar silage fields that have gotten something.

Which one are you referring to, Cattle prices or methane values?

Oh ya, it reminds me of one time a few years back I went to the county IFA meeting. They had the national livestock chair giving a talk. He said it was looking like beef prices would come under pressure and the signs for sheep prices were positive. Over the following few months, it was the opposite that happened. Who knows what way things will go.

Strange, when prices hit rock bottom some years ago and some of us were protesting at factory gates, I remember some farmers, on main beef forums, parroting that the consumer wouldn't pay any more for meat.

Geoge, the stocking figures you put up, don't add up. Try harder.

If it's farm to fork as you're now claiming, where are the stronger cattle in your original stock, 20 sucklers, 10 yearling heifers?

If I was able to spot spray with a knapsack I would go organic no prob, but watching clean fields get scrubby with rushes would wreck my head

Id disagree with the pre reseeding anyway, it's a very handy tool to have when you're in organics, cleans up a lot if fields have problems and gives a fresh start, plus if you can get a rotation of cereals out of it it's a nice little earner.

You wouldn't want to be doing it too often though, every 10 years max in my book or your burning off your OM.

I'm surprisingly happy with covers, especially given the cold weather, we've just started our second rotation here and have enough so far, we should be good when the growth kicks off next week, lots of clover showing too.

Badly!

I'm speaking as someone who was very close to going into organics. In the past few years I did two separate trials utilising a stale seedbed which is the only real alternative to roundup. I cultivated the field until it was ready for grass seed, left it for 3 weeks, tilled again and sowed. I ended up with a field that was very heavily infested with thistles and other weeds. As all of my reseeds in recent years have been done with multi-species, I couldn't spray so I was stuck with a dirty field.

Second time around I did the stale seedbed thing again, but this time after three weeks I sprayed with round-up and sowed the grass seed the following day. That worked very well but the downside is the land is out of commission for longer.

I think based on speaking to people, listening to peoples opinion on here and doing the organics course myself, I would conclude that if you are joining organics, you would be best to aim not to have to do any re-seeding, just manage the grassland you have by means of topping.

Hi, Yes I generally plough except for one piece of land I own which is very stony. I did it to see if there was an alternative to spraying weeds post emergence which would be the norm around here. The idea, as I understand it is to let the weeds germinate, then destroy them, giving the grass seeds the best chance of establishment before the weeds. I'm a big believer in trying stuff out before I make up my mind. Anyway, it's all a learning curve.

BTW, what do you mean by round up has only very recently been used in grassland. I can remember seeing fields burnt off for reseeding back to the 80s. Prior to that, I believe people didn't tend to do straight reseeds but rather rotated a crop before going back into grass.

Add some oil of citronella to the vinegar. It’ll help to burn the rushes.

A bit like my late uncles (tillage farmer) answer when I asked him about controlling rats in the grain.

Are you feeding them?

The same with the weeds. Round up was very rarely used for grassland reseeding in the last century, around here anyway, a dairying area. It's commonplace now for various reasons.

I'd agree about the cereal crops, ( it's still a good idea as mentioned earlier) in the old days but in the last generation, most of the reseeding was done successfully without the glyphosate. The multi species only makes it easier now ts iso competitive.

We've never had a weed issue in re seeds that wasn't self inflicted or easily cured.

Never used round up for "burning off" and only rarely used clover friendly post emergence back 20 plus years ago. We're just after ploughing a field with a self inflicted weed problems here, we'll see how it goes!