Sowing the seeds!

That's what we are up to on the farm at the moment... Or at least trying to, the weather has not really been on our side! But the direct drilled wheat pilot on the field I share with my sisters is a least drilled and sprouting! Hooray! One small victory.

It's also seed diversity day today! So seems only right to have a little ponder on the wonder and plunder of the seed!

According to the FAO the world has over 50,000 edible plants. Many of them have been domesticated by man over time. Farmers saving seeds,  crops to local environments, carrying seeds to new lands, evolving a rich diversity of varieties, landraces and charachteristics. But diversity is rapidly decreasing. 

60% of the worlds food comes from three plants. Wheat, maize and rice (FAO again!) and diversity within these is also being lost.

There have long been seed breeders growing seeds for sale. But the real change came in 1980, when unknown to much of the public the US Supreme Court ruled that living organisms could be patented, so long as they have been manipulated genetically.  That a company could own life. The rest of the world swiftly followed.

From a commercial perspective its clear to see the interests. Investment in research and technology for manipulating life needs to be returned on, fair enough. But this decision has been disastrous for seed and biological diversity and takes power away from farmers and under corporate control.

On Ferry Farm, like many many others, we buy seeds from the big companies like KWS who have huge budgets to develop new varieties. Some have more fungal resistance, some are shorter or have longer flag leaves. Equally some are also more prone to fungal disease,falling over and rust!

What this means is that KWS own the right to the seed. We cannot save it without paying them royalties (which are often not much less than buying the new seed). Moreover as many of them are hybrid varieties, we wouldn't really know what we were going to get next year.. And as they are not landraces (the traditional method of adapting wheat to local conditions) the wheat will not adapt to kcal conditions over time. So we lose a lot of the advantages too.. We have the choice of about 20 varieties of hard wheat that we can grow.

In conventional farming, the seeds will also be 'dressed'. That is dunked in chemicals which normally turn them a lovely fluorescent shade of orange. In wheat this is commonly with a fungicide to prevent common bunt, a very common and destructive fungal disease and often something to stop it tasting nice to slugs and birds. This also makes it hard for farmers to save seed (although a local farmer was telling me he ha a mobile seed dressing outfit that come to his farm and dress his own seed).

To my horror I discovered that our seed, and most others in the UK , are coated with 'redigo deter' This includes a neonicotinoid, a systemic pesticide which has been linked with colony collapse of bees.. Oh dear. I have been reassured by our 'agronomist' (who also happens to be the bloke who
sells us seeds and chemicals...) that as wheat does not flower it should not attract bees and that dressing the seed is much better than spraying the plant. Perhaps he is right but it is still a huge worry. 

In my travels I have been trying to find alternative solutions.. But found that many.. Including
 organic farmers are dressing the seed with something. Except for a wise lady biodynamic farmer I 
met in Brussels on the Good Food March. Who quite simply said that if you have a healthy soil and a well balanced system, you don't need to dress your seed. 

Here here. The problem is in reality, a wheat farmer that sells commercially cannot afford to take that risk. This certainly says more for the fact that specialisation lowers farm resilience and this creates more risk than anything. But for now, in order to survive, I don't think we can take the risk of not dressing the seed. But I shall keep lobbying for more soil improvers and increasing diversity and hope we get there one day and I shall keep searching for other organic alternatives (please do post if you know any!)

In terms of seed diversity. We do normally select three varieties to spread the risk a little. I am keen to mix these in one field to help with pest and disease resilience.. But it makes things more difficult from a chemical application perspective (ie we would probably end up using more than we need to as each has different requirements) so as long as you keep using chemicals... Seed biodiversity is compromised for his reason too. 

There are brave wheat farmers who save their seeds (and some anarchistic ones who don't pay their royalties!). Others who grow ancient varieties or mix up different varieties in one field.  Some who grow commercially but have a clear organic consumer market. I should really be hunting them down and finding out what they do! If you are one please own up a your secrets now! 

The problem is, if I am self-depricatingly honest, is that in order to survice you either need to find a unique market or you do what everyone else is doing to keep afloat. We have gone for the latter and the more I learn the more I respect those that haven't, but the more I realise just how hard it is. 

For now I have realised that we are doing what we are for a reason. Changing everything could lose all of my dad and Granada hard work. But we are continuing to try new things bit by bit and I hope we we are slowly finding a better way for the future. 

In the meantime we need policy to support us to do that and the political will to stop corporate control of seeds, and ultimately the food chain. 

Real farmers taking back control!

Here is a blog written by my co-cyclist Darren!

18th September

In Lille we headed to meet members and supporters of Confederation Paysanne at, what had been called, ‘à la Ferme du Sart’ – The Farm of Sart.  The son from the giant sports retailing family that owns ‘Decathlon’, which had branches in most high streets across France, had started this new enterprise.  The Confederation Paysanne and others questioned the use of a farm/farmers identity by a business which is proving to be primarily a retail operation and is manoeuvring to expand through franchises.  A previous protest at another branch saw a sign being pulled down by tractor and hearing about today’s planned visit the owner had decided to bow to pressure, dropping ‘à la Ferme’ from the beginning of the name.

On route we have also seen another way that food retailing can be organised.  We stopped in France, and then again in Belgium at farmers co-operative shops.

‘Au Panier Vert’ is a co-operative of 30 producers who decided to work together to directly retail their produce from a small shop they started on one of their farms, close to Lille.  80% of the sale price goes back to the producer the other 20% is kept for the costs of the co-operative.  Over the years they have built a shop and food processing facilities and then later expanded it.  Now they offer a large range of meat, diary, fruit, vegetables, plants and bakery produce.  Their produce sells at a similar price to that of the big supermarkets.

We also stopped at the abattoir of the co-operative ‘Coprosain’ at Ath in Belgium.  Coprosain was created following protests against the closure of the local diary.  A number of farmers decided to create a new co-operative diary business processing their milk and retailing their other produce from the premises.  Customers asked why they could not also purchase meat from the animals that the farmers reared and in response to this demand the co-operative made the necessary investment to open their own abattoir.  Eighty percent of the co-operative is owned by the producers.  The co-op has been extremely successful, opening two additional shops, also selling at 18 markets.  It employs 45 workers.  Despite much interest they decided not to expand their operation beyond the 45 producers involved now.  They don’t want to create another huge corporation but would rather see numerous local initiatives.

There is a clear contrast between this model, shops selling exclusively locally grown and processed produce with the growers getting a fair price for their work and the more common model where farmers produce for the commodity markets with large buyers and supermarkets occupying hugely powerful positions in the supply chain and making huge profits while growers struggle to make ends meet.

Peasants in search of land!

September 14th

After an eventful start to our voyage in Calais we headed off across the countryside towards Saint Omer.
One of our cycling companions, Martin lives and work the land at a small holding close to our planned route so we detour to visit his wonderful abode.

Flying the flag ‘Paysans enquete de terre!’ (Peasants in search of land!) he explained how he came to live there. The typical French farmstead had been a stop on a ‘cyclotour’ he made with a group of young people who want to get on the land.  The challenges they face are high land prices (particularly due to speculation), the lack of availability of small pockets of land in the area, diffficulty getting planning to live on their farms and the need for specific agricultural training (required in France in order to access social services).



Martin now lives there and grows vegetables for his keep, but is still on the hunt for his own pocket of land and is passionate about changing the situation for other young people across Europe!

He is joining us to Brussels to make his message loud and clear! There are thousands of young people and potential new entrants to farming all across Europe. The CAP must support them to make this important step to help create a future of good food and farming!

Ting Ting! Joining the Good Food March to Brussels!

A few weeks ago I headed off to Calais to join the Good Food March to the European Parliament! We cycled with French farmers, consumers and representatives of Confederation Paysanne to  to a Civil Society consultation on the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy!


I will post some of my musings from the Good Food Blog www.goodfoodmarch.wordpress.com


12th September 2012


Having brought in the last of this years harvest yesterday (phew!) and leaving our family farm at the busiest time of year (Sorry Dad!) I am heading down to Dover to meet Sam and Darren to hop over the channel to Calais!

I am joining for a number of reasons. Firstly because I feel that among a multitude of other factors, the Common Agricultural Policy has encouraged more export orientated farming. This has effects all along the chain, and encourages farms to increase in scale (as the payments are per area) and to produce monocultures of commodities such as sugar, wheat and oilseed rape (i.e like our farm and many in our area). These commodities are sold at global prices on 'the market' where they are also victim to speculation. There is no real encouragement to grow food for local people, to reduce chemical use or for small scale farmers to stay in business (in Europe and globally).

As I have spent more time on the farm and pondering its future over the last few years I am concerned that although 'the powers that be' (that is big-agribusiness, seed and chemical companies, the food processing industry etc) assure us that chemical based industrialised farming is the only way we will feed the world (as if that is really their goal... they just want to sell us more products!)... it just feels that the way we are farming is not sustainable. And when I think about our farm in 20 years time, I would like to see something a little different.

So I am joining the march to learn and share ideas and hopefully have some kind of an impact on the future of farming in Europe! I am super excited about sharing ideas, foraged foods, delicious dinners and the French countryside with like minded people over the next few days!

Ting ting! (that’s our bike bells you see!)

More from us soon!
Katie