Outcome of Pasture Walks
Managing Stress of Farming
On-Farm Food Service Tips
Innovative Farm Transfer
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Volume 26 | Number 5
September | October 2018
Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service
Growing demand for organic corn, soybeans creates opportunities for U.S. farmers By Peter Golbitz
U.S. farmers looking for a profitable opportunity in a rapidly developing market need not look any further than their own backyard—if they can produce organic soybeans or corn. The growing demand for organic feed ingredients, driven primarily by large investments in organic poultry production, has created an ever-tightening supply situation in the U.S. that threatens to get even tighter due to inadequate U.S. production coupled with concerns about imports of potentially fraudulent organic soybeans and corn from questionable players halfway around the globe. Just over a year ago, the Washington Post broke a news story about a large shipment of soybeans that had traveled from Ukraine to Turkey, and then to California, that was fraudulently labeled as organic. While organic farmers had been asking the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) for months to look into rising imports from overseas (see the September 2016 Organic Broadcaster), this very public news story and the questions it posed set off a mad scramble at the NOP and among industry players to get a handle on how this incident happened, and figure out how to put in place new rules or programs that could prevent, or at least greatly reduce, the chances of this happening again in the future. The response by both public and private sector players produced a number of backward- and forward-looking initiatives that seem to be paying off already for U.S. organic farmers. The net result of this closer look has been a significant decrease in
organic imports in 2018 while demand and prices for U.S. produced organic soybeans and corn have been on the rise. And with commodity prices currently in the basement for conventional soybeans and corn, along with the market instability created by the current administration in Washington, it would appear that there is no better time than the present for U.S. farmers to increase acres committed to organic production. In response to the discovery of the fraud, the USDA began working on improving organic enforcement activities by expanding training programs for certifiers and inspectors and holding direct meetings with certifying agencies in both the U.S. and Europe to review inspection procedures. In addition, NOP asked the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), which reviews and develops new rules for the NOP, to provide recommendations to improve oversight of organic imports. During last fall’s and this spring’s NOSB meetings, the board convened an Imports Integrity Panel of industry and trade experts —along with certifiers, inspectors and agency staff—to review the situation, offer solutions, and support further development of best practices for protecting organic integrity. Practice changes already initiated by the USDA NOP in 2017 and 2018 include: improving how import and export certificates are used in trade; increasing collaboration between APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) and CBP (Customs and Border Protection) on import
Farmers growing organic grain have found prices are up due to high demand for organic feed ingredients.
oversight; improving data quality, and increased reporting to the Organic Integrity Database. In addition, the agency is exploring the use of new technology such as blockchain to better manage data and verify product movement across international supply chains. To Organic Corn & Soybeans on page 6
Fall-planted cover crops build soil health, protect fields from erosion in winter By Matt Leavitt
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As the growing season winds to close, our thoughts move towards harvest, fall field work, application of manure and other soil amendments, and cleaning up machinery for the winter. These shortening days also provide an excellent opportunity to think about planting a cover crop. The multifaceted benefits of cover crops in a rotation are well understood. These crops contribute to the long-term health and maintenance of your most important farm resource: your soil. Cover crops can work in nearly every crop rotation and farming system in the Upper Midwest, but are especially well suited to organic systems where
crop diversity and rotations are more complex and provide more windows of opportunity to successfully integrate cover crops. As organic operations are charged with maintaining or improving the natural resources on the farm, including soil and water quality, fall-planted cover crops can measurably achieve those goals on a year-by-year basis. Unlike the short window in spring for planting, late summer and fall provides a wide opportunity to plant a diversity of cover crop species to suit a variety of production systems and rotations. Crops like small grains, silage corn, canning vegetables, dry edible beans and early soybeans are harvested early enough to accommodate a period of favorable weather for cover crop growth and development, keeping your soil biologically active until freeze-up. Cover crop planting can also be a great compliment to fall field passes, giving producers a place to spread manure (and hold it in place), graze animals, harvest forage, help break down persistent crop residue, and can be timed with fall harvest or light tillage. However, as all Midwestern producers are well aware, fall weather can be erratic with early frosts and lack of reliable moisture. While we strongly recommend cover cropping on a near-universal basis, the beneficial gains to your soil are typically related to good cover crop establishment, root growth, and biomass accumulation. Moreover, cash crops like corn and full season soybeans leave little time for adequate cover crop establishment and growth after harvest. As with any planting window, there are critical questions to ask yourself when thinking about incorporating a fall cover crop into your rotation. • What crop is coming off, and what crop will come next in rotation?
• What fall field passes need to be done on the field(s) in question (i.e., fall manure application, fall tillage due to drainage, amendments, tiling, etc.)? • What are your primary goals with cover crops: protecting soil from erosion, fixing nitrogen, sequestering/scavenging nutrients, breaking up compaction, growing fall forage, etc.? • How do you intend on seeding and terminating the cover crop? • Do you desire a cover crop that will overwinter or winterkill? Putting thought into the above questions can help guide which species or mixtures will be most successful on your operation as species, mixtures and end goals can be widely diverse.
Cover Crop Selection
There are a diversity of cover crops suitable for fall planting that generally fall into three major categories: cereal grains/grasses, cool-season legumes and brassicas. Cereal grains are quick growing, cost-effective, easy to manage, accumulate ample biomass in a short time-frame, scavenge and hold nutrients, and have fibrous root systems. Winter cereal grains like winter rye and winter triticale are seeded in the fall of the year and reliably overwinter, providing the soil needed coverage during periods of high-erosion potential, continuing their growth right away in the spring. Spring grasses like oats, barley, and annual ryegrass are a good fit for producers in the Upper Midwest looking for cover crops that die out over the winter but still provide good biomass accumulation and rooting (though annual ryegrass can To Cover Crops on page 8