Where there’s muck there’s a way to survive the fuel crisis

A bit like the gruesome orange `You’ve been Tango'd’ advert. A harsh reality has crept up behind the petrol heads, and is busy slapping them about a bit. The oil price has gone through the ceiling, taken the lift up to the 16th floor and stepped out onto the terrace at the top of the building….and however strong our powers of persuasion it ain’t coming down.

This is what makes a press release from the Soil Association especially interesting. It says farming must break its dependency on artificial means of restoring the fertility of the land.

Organic agriculture eschews artificial fertiliser. Artificial fertiliser is hugely energy hungry - something approaching 90% of the cost of producing ammonia based fertilisers is made up the cost of the energy used in the process. This often comes from natural gas, but the price of natural gas is very closely aligned with oil. In the past year the cost of most artificial fertilisers has doubled.

Organic farming does not use these fertilisers, so ergo; organic farmers don’t have the added expense of these inputs into their farming system.

There is a problem though. With most organic arable systems the yields of the crops fall. That’s fine when cereal prices are generally low and growing organically can generate a premium…. However with the world price for wheat and other cereals at near record levels, it can be worth farmers renouncing their organic status to grow crops conventionally increasing the yields, and trousering the extra.

This in turn means a serious shortage of organic animal feed. One farmer I recently visited in Cumbria found the problem was getting so serious last year that she bought a small piece of arable land, converted it to organic and is now growingbarley, quite a courageous move so far north.

In the current economic climate it should pay dividends and she’s hoping to be quids-in.

In terms of the organic system this is only really feasible on mixed farms where the animals provide a natural fertiliser which can in turn be used on the crops.

It’s often little help to organic pig and poultry farmers who often have small units, and very little space, or suitable land to grow feed.

For those organic farms which are self contained, and have a complete farming system within the same unit, something which goes to the very core of the organic movement, the oil crisis could be very good news, but for others who have to buy in feed, the rising price will hit hard.

Nor is organic farming immune from the other impact of the rise in oil price. The cost of harvesting the crops, using oil driven machinery, or the distribution costs, which again are oil-based.

What the advocates of organic farming will be hoping for is that the stratospheric rise in the oil price, and the consequent rise in the price of artificial fertiliser, will make non-organic farmers think very carefully about their dependence on these inputs, and maybe cut down on their use. If that does happen the real challenge will be to find ways of keeping the yields as high as possible to feed as many people as possible, with lower inputs.

For commodity farmers the next few years could be uncomfortable, but only because the old certainties, have gone out the window, and they may have to re-learn some of the old ways of farming where nature and its healing powers replace the nitrogen quick fix from a fertiliser bag.