Published by Farmers Guide, September 2006.

Better returns prompt large-scale
organic conversion

There may be glimmers of hope on the horizon for conventional arable farmers - with low world cereal stocks and demand from the biofuels sector helping to boost prices - but that's not going to detract Suffolk farmer John Pawsey from converting to a completely organic system.

It hasn't been a quick decision and it hasn't been an easy one, but he's convinced it's the only way to go, for both economic and environmental reasons.

"We've had 350 acres running under an organic rotation at Alpheton Hall Farm for the past six years and the performance of that land, over the whole rotation, has been £100/ha better than our conventionally farmed land," Mr Pawsey told Farmers Guide. "The better return is the result of better prices and lower inputs balanced by lower yields.

"Compared with conventional farming, the yields are about halved and the price about double, but the fact we're not using sprays or fertiliser - other than muck - is where the extra profit is made."

Alpheton Hall sits in the south-west corner of the 1,700 owned acres farmed by David Alston (Suffolk) Ltd - the business also farms another 750 acres under contract. Mr Pawsey (Mr Alston's grandson) is farm manager and a director of the business, while Mr Alston's sons, Neil and John, are also directors and run their own farms in Norfolk.

"We have a total of about 1,500 acres that is croppable and following the work we had done at Alpheton Hall, it was time to consider the direction to take," Mr Pawsey said. "I had not been enjoying the conventional side of the business, which involved working long hours and using high levels of inputs for a low return. Converting the whole farm to organic production seemed to be the right way to go, but as a family business, I had to be able to justify the decision to everyone involved.

"The recent strengthening in cereal prices meant that I had to look at the numbers very hard, but it's clear that to get comparable performance from conventional farming we would need to see wheat prices at £87/t and oilseed rape at £180/t."

Indeed Mr Pawsey thinks that these figures may even need revising upwards when the organic conversion is complete.

"When we were only farming part of the farm under an organic system, there were some areas that maybe didn't get as much attention as they deserved. I'm quite confident that because of the straightforward cost-saving measures, like using more home-saved seed, and the better prices we should get for higher quantities of organic crops, we would need to see conventional wheat at £100/t and oilseed rape at £200/t for it to even come close to the returns available from organic farming.

"With our organic experience, out of our three contract farms, one is converting wholly to organic production this autumn and the other two are considering the option for autumn 2007," Mr Pawsey added. "Even with conservative organic prices, we have been able to offer some farms in excess of £50/acre with the Organic Entry Level Scheme with the farmer keeping their single farm payment.

Environmental factors

Although the economics of changing to an organic system were clearly favourable, environmental factors were also part of the decision-making process.

"We had been farming a wheat, rape, spring barley and sugar beet rotation, but cereal prices were pushing us towards a wheat/oilseed rape system," Mr Pawsey explained. "But one of the contract farms we manage had followed that cropping for 12 years and simply can't grow rape any more.

"We just don't know what it has done to the soil, although I understand that The Arable Group is doing some work on this problem, and the fear of being forced down that route by the economics of conventional farming was another factor in taking the organic option."

The extensive use of chemicals was another area of concern for Mr Pawsey.

"On a personal level, I'd done just about all the spraying on the farm for the past five years," he said. "I found myself continuously mixing up chemicals with long names, but having no idea what they were doing to the environment."

Organic farming, on the other hand, is all about getting to know your soil intimately.

"You have to take care if it," Mr Pawsey said. "You can't just throw on a bag of nitrogen, you need to put organic matter back into the soil and build up nitrogen levels through careful management.

"When I go to organic open days, I just can't help but pick up on the enthusiasm of the people who have been doing this for years. Indeed, I've found organic farmers generally to be some of the most dynamic and market orientated people in our industry."

Some of the enthusiasm is already shining through from Mr Pawsey himself, who claimed that he hadn't been so enthusiastic about the future of farming for some.

"I'm looking forward to it and feel that the switch to organic production will be a great success," he said. "I was recently asked by my local vicar to host a group of his colleagues from the local diocese and show them round the farm and to paint a picture of modern agriculture.

"By the end of it, I was on such a crest of enthusiasm and I haven't felt like that for about the past five years.

"I'm pretty sure that when all the land is organic there will be other benefits and spin-offs that we haven't even considered yet."

High-tech approach

John Pawsey is taking what he calls a high-tech approach to organic farming and has already made his first major machinery purchase - a 6m, mounted weeding hoe, guided by a video camera, that he bought from Garford Farm Machinery.

"The hoe is central to the whole operation and will allow us to weed between rows at 25cm centres at about 10km/hr," he said, "our Free-flow drill will be converted to work at that width as well.

"Research shows that the wider rows don't result in any yield gain, but there's no loss either, and it will allow us to easily tackle any weeds."

Mr Pawsey said that he had originally intended to go through each crop two or three times with the hoe, but had now decided to take a more sophisticated approach.

"All future tractors we buy will be GPS enabled and we will use a weed mapping system so that we will know where we need to use the hoe (which can take care of tap root weeds), and where our Einböck weeder will be able to do the job instead."

The farm's long-standing agronomist, John Clarke, of Independent Agronomy, will remain a part of the team and will be involved in mapping the weeds across the organic farm.

"We will be able to feed that information into the tractor pulling the hoe and let it get on with the job," Mr Pawsey added. "As the tractor will be more or less driving itself, it will give the operator more time to look for weeds as well."

The main tractor on the farm, a six-year-old Case IH Quadtrac 9380, is due for renewal and is now likely to be replaced with something smaller.

"Moving to an organic system, with its more even mix of spring and winter crops, will take the pressure off post-harvest cultivations and the race to get everything into the soil by the end of September," Mr Pawsey said. "I'm pretty sure that we will be able to get the work done with a smaller tractor, so as well as reducing our variable costs, we should be able to pull the fixed costs down as well."

Since Mr Pawsey took over from his grandfather as manager in 1985, the number of staff has fallen from eight to just two and the number of tractors has been cut from 13 to two.

"Our remaining farm workers, Andrew Meekings and David Eady, have been through a rollercoaster ride in the past 20 years with all the changes, but they have remained supportive," he said. "Whatever I throw at them, they may raise a smile, but they get on with it."

The farm has been running a min-till system for some time and Mr Pawsey is in no hurry to start ploughing without good reason.

"I've been reading a book from 1951 by Newman Turner called Fertility Farming," he said. "It advocates a non-plough system that just keeps the top few inches cultivated.

"I don't know if it will be possible to achieve that with our organic rotation, but I'll be keeping a hold of our min-till kit and carrying out a few experiments."

Conversion process

The organic rotation planned for the conversion process will start with either an in-conversion bean or a cereal crop undersown with clover. After harvest, the clover will be left to grow throughout the second summer before being ploughed or cultivated in the autumn and planted with a winter wheat to be harvested in year three as the first fully organic crop.

Year four produces a spring cereal crop followed by winter beans in year five, and the sixth year is back to a spring cereal undersown with clover.

No sprays or inorganic fertilisers will be used, but the farm has a good supply of organic material to put back into the soil.

"We supply an organic mushroom grower with wheat straw and in return get the spent compost," Mr Pawsey said. "We apply it at between 8-20t/ha.

"We also buy-in muck from an extensive organic turkey rearing farm. We can spread up to 8t/ha of poultry manure and still stay within our NVZ and organic limits."

War record

The Alston family bought Lodge Farm, at Alpheton, in 1905 and has been building the business ever since, apart from a few years during World War II when the War Ministry took over part of the farm to build an airfield.

Unlike many families in the same situation, the Alstons remained on the farm throughout the war and made many friends among the crews of the United States 487 Bomb Group that was based there.

The airfield saw 185 missions leave for Europe made up of B24 Liberator and later B17 Flying Fortresses bombers.

The farm still regularly hosts former airmen who come back to visit the base and a member of the Alston family always attends the 487 Bomber Group's annual reunion in America.

By the 1950s, the unit extended to 1,100 acres (and employed 54 men, many of them still working with horses), and it was to remain this size until the 1990s when Shimpling Park Farm was bought adding another 650 acres. To help fund the purchase, a small farm, remote from the main block, was sold and the airfield runways were dug up and sold for hardcore.