CONVERSION

Seagar Mason

I am very honoured to be asked to speak at this landmark conference. For those of us who have been involved in organics for a long time, these are exciting times.

My topic is conversion, but I would like to take some licence with that and use this opportunity to take a critical look at how we are doing things at the moment, and to look forward to perhaps what will happen in the future.

So I¹m not going to talk about the nuts and bolts of conversion, the certification process, the fees, all the bits of paper to fill in, etc. There¹s plenty of info on that at our stand here at the conference or available from our office.

Instead lets talk about the nitty gritty of what we're trying to do here, what this conference is all about, so the topic is NZ's Conversion to Organics, way to go!

Certification - who needs it? / What a hassle / Producer ----- Certifier ----- Consumer / Different versions of organic / Whose bandwagon is this anyway? / Consumers trust the genuine certifiers

Suggestion: Conventional growers should have to be registered to use chemicals, and to tell their customers about all the chemicals they've used, then the organic growers could just get on with it. So the first question is "why do we need all this certification rubbish anyway". It really is over the top these days. It takes a lot of time, a lot of money, and niggly inspectors come and haggle over fine details, if we're not careful we¹ll soon be lumped in the same basket as the IRD.

Some of the original organic visionaries such as our own Bob Crowder have expressed serious concerns about the current emphasis on inspection to the nth degree. These are very valid concerns, and the sooner we can reduce the requirements of certification the better.

The real need for certification is because organic consumers want a connection with their food producers. The certifiers provide that link, and give organic consumers the guarantee that the production of the food they are buying measures up to their expectations.

So what's the problem? If someone says they are genuinely organic, why don’t we just trust them and write them out a certificate?

There are 2 main problems. First there's still a whole lot of different versions of organic out there, both in the way it's defined and the way in which it's measured. In the EU, organic is defined by a law, so there's not many cowboys there anymore. Japan will have a similar law by April next year, USA not long after, and NZ will need to rapidly follow suit or our exporting of organic products will lose credibility. NZ's domestic consumers also deserve far better than what we have at the moment with masses of self-claimed organic products of who knows what quality for sale out there.

The 2nd problem is the bandwagon one, suddenly we have a whole lot of people wanting to hop on board, and we must ask "for what reason?" Have they suddenly seen the light? Or the dollars?

Over the years there have been many individuals and organizations wanting to come into organics on the cheap, push the standards around, try and grab the premiums without doing it properly. If we had allowed that to happen then, or if we allow it to happen in the future, then organic consumers will soon lose their trust in organics and walk away from it. In fact most of the hundreds of growers and farmers who have converted to organics over the last 5 years, under the influence of the genuine committed certifiers, have become enthusiastic converts who are proud of being part of a top organic standard.

Organic consumers currently have enormous trust in the word organic and in the genuine organic certifiers, and that is the reason for the explosion in demand for organic food. It is our job as certifiers to retain that trust while minimising the compliance costs to the genuine organic growers. It’s ironic that it is the organic growers who have to go through all this pain of certification. Turn it around the other way, it should be the growers who use the chemicals who have to make the declarations about what they are doing.

Conversion - too hard? / Remove the myths / Understand the consumers / Mindset change/ Preconversion changes / What will the neighbours think / Go for it

So certification will be a necessary evil for a while yet, both to protect organic consumers and also because of the considerable change of approach which is required when conventional farmers convert to organics. Organics is not a just a change of inputs, it is a change of approach. It is vital that the certifiers are committed to, and fully understand organics to ensure that these farmers are guided along the right path.

When a producer considers conversion to organics, their first questions are "what is it?" Is it the hippies living at the end of the road in the house bus? Is it Nandor? Is it hydroponic lettuces? Is it using Roundup instead of 245T? Is it eating that bread with bits in it? Is it going into that slightly dangerous looking organic shop with the wife? We recently had an enquiry from a flourmill asking if we would certify white flour, or does all certified organic flour have to be wholemeal? John and Carol Duncan of Founders Brewery who make wonderful certified organic beers, are sometimes asked at their café if they have any "real beer". John takes great pleasure in explaining that organic beer is in fact the only "real beer". And of course ever since the Danish sperm count study in 1994 showed that organic farmers have twice the sperm count of conventional farmers it's clear that organic farmers are the only "real men "!

So those of us in the middle of this rush to organics have an enormous job to do to help remove the myths and to provide information to help producers through this change. At BIO-GRO we have recently produced some guides which are available to help producers get started on organics, and these guides are available from our stand at this conference if you would like a copy. These guides will help farmers considering conversion to understand the organic industry and the right approach to organic production. If you do it properly the neighbours won't scoff, they'll sit up and take notice! Bruce Snowdon of Heinz Watties at his presentation to the Organic Expo in Hamilton 3 weeks ago likened farming to learning to ride a bike. Chemical farming is when you still have the trainer wheels on, the props. Convert to organic, take the trainer wheels off and go for it!

Will it always be so hard? / There's no support / There's no information / There's no research / It would be good if there were no obstructions / We don't want much do we

Does organics have to be hard? A recent NZ Farmer editorial supported NZ only having the best organic standards, good, and correctly stated that the premiums paid recompensed the farmers for the production difficulties involved.

There are still considerable technical difficulties involved in commercial organic production. For veges it's weeds, tomato blight , mildew on onions and squash. For apples the 3 biggest problems are blackspot , blackspot , and blackspot . For sheep it's flystrike, for cattle its worms and for dairying its mastitis. Each sector of commercial organic production has 1 or 2 key problems. Each of these problems will be quickly solved with research once we get our fair share, and we're only talking $00 000s not $millions, such as is going into that other sort of research.

As an example, Sue and I on our commercial organic market garden have always battled aphids on our greenhouse cucumbers, for 10 years every year we lost $00s while the poor plants suffered. Since the summer before last we can now buy in a parasite, little Mr Aphidius Aphytes . We can bring them in early in the season to supplement our own resident Aphidius Aphytes which come along later ­- end of problem. That's what organics is all about, aiding the natural balance, not going in there to kill everything. Why do things, which make so much sense, take so long to happen? Deal with the key technical difficulties, and we¹ll certainly be cost competitive on production.

In fact what we are asking Govt for is not so much that we want support, more so that we don't need any obstructions to the development of our industry. So organics doesn’t have to be hard, and it won't be once we've had our fair share of research funding and other public resources. In fact, a little bit of help and organics will be easy! Things that make sense usually are.

What’s the problem? / Or, if it's such a good idea why isn¹t everyone into it? / Challenges "accepted" scientific models / Reduces input needs / Market driven ???

Organics is information, Heinz Watties said that many years ago. If the market continues to push that way and we have the support we need then NZ organic by 2020 is entirely feasible. So what's the holdup? We obviously upset some of the scientists, we’re outside of their comfort zone. There is this mad rush for GE, but there are many people such as myself in organics, (I have 2 degrees in applied science), who are scientists but fully support organics and oppose GE for very sound reasons. But be very aware of what we are up against , here we sit plotting organic by 2020, while for the Future Sectors conference next month funded by both MORST and FORST we don’t even rate a mention . We don¹t even figure in their plans!

The next problem is that we pose an enormous threat to the support industries for conventional agriculture. The average conventional pipfruit orchard spends about $2000/ha/year, the average organic orchard less than $1000. $1000 saved x? ha pipfruit orchards in NZ is $ ???? that agrichemical companies will lose. The average conventional dairy farm spends about $50 per cow p.a. on animal health, the average organic dairy farm is less than $10. $40 saved x??? cows in NZ is $ ??? that the animal remedy companies will lose. As Cathy and Jamie Tait ­-Jamieson said on their Country Calendar program the chemical treatments are replaced by management not by different inputs. And for some reason the fact that we are market driven is not obvious to some of the powers that be. They seem to have this strange idea that we want to make it compulsory. Very strange, when we are in fact a perfect model of a production system producing exactly to the consumers’ specifications, and if the customer doesn't want it then it won't happen!

Pt Chevalier Herald / 19 May 2010 / Soil & Health Gets it Wrong

Organic by 2020? ­ What a joke! Soil & Health's predictions of NZ being an organic nation by 2020 have been shown to be completely wrong.

Yesterday at the NZ National Conference on Organics Mrs I.L. Neverdoit signed up for her husband to commence conversion of his 400 ha livestock property to organics . This is the final farm in NZ to convert to organics, meaning that all of NZ's agriculture is now either certified organic or in conversion. All of NZ's meat processors have refused to take Mr Neverdoit's livestock for the last 3 years but he has held on, convinced that a market for conventional livestock would reappear.

Mrs Neverdoit explained how her husband finally relented when he used up the last of his precious store of weedkiller and couldn't obtain any more . The black market for agricultural chemicals dried up more than 3 years ago.

Finally, lets look back for a few years in order to look forward. I always remember Perry Spiller's closing addresses at the Soil & Health conferences in the late 1980's. They were big conferences with a lot of very good energy. Perry always said that he knew he would see the day when the National Organic Conference each year couldn't find a venue big enough to fit everyone in, while the Conference of the National Assoc of Chemical Farmers which was being held at the same time along the road was in a tiny classroom big enough to hold all 16 members of their Assoc .

Let’s make sure it happens!