So I am going to grow wheat organically?

Waiting!

I thought it was pretty well expected that you would get a lower yield but that it would be offset by lower input costs ?

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i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life,.......,and not,when i came to die,discover that i had not lived...Henry David Thoreau

How do you figure to grow 70 bu./acre when the Canadian spring wheat average for 2014 was 44 bu./acre? You must be an outstanding farmer.....why change your methods now? Are you certified organic yet? Seems to me that instead of asking a group of homesteaders, you could go to the source--those who are already doing it and are offering their help.


http://www.cog.ca/

geo

Yes, the yield will be MUCH lower in grain crops. But the thing is, so many think this is not the case.

Input costs are lower in some areas, higher in others.

IE. more fuel, more labor costs, more tillage and machinery costs, green manure seed costs, "letting the land rest" costs.

Less herbicide costs, less fertilizer costs. Less harvest and storage costs from the large yield cut.

The friends I have who have gone organic in grains, tell me this: Their costs remain fairly constant, their yields drop in half or less, and their price received goes up a fair bit.

The biggest trouble, is their soil organic matter declines, their soil erodes, weeds become un-manageable, and there is no way to replace all the nutrients the crops pull off the land, once an acreage that can make you a living is attained. Some try to use forages and legumes to help, and they do indeed, but while these are growing, simply to add some N, a revenue producing crop is not able to be grown there. This is probably the largest cost. A lost season of revenue from that land, and a yield immediately cut in half, just by virtue that the land is being "rebuilt"...

Dale, it ain't likely to happen... Even the New Farm co-operaters from the late '80s didn't manage that kind of yield, and they were really up on their game... As for the folks you mean on HT, they haven't a clue... Very good at complaining and making demands that they won't back with dollars... Most are not doing anything more than backyard gardens, or at most an acre of grain if they have the help to plant and harvest... A heritage variety would have to be planted THICK to make a big yield organically, and in a wet area with no fungicide to fight the diseases you mentioned... But I would like to see how it performed conventionally, compared to newer varieties...

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i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life,.......,and not,when i came to die,discover that i had not lived...Henry David Thoreau

That is average for a huge area. Some areas grow 22, some 80. I thankfully am in a blessed area for soil and rainfall, so 70 is doable. I am not an outstanding farmer! lol!

I have land that I could certify tomorrow, if I chose to. The reason I am asking my friends on here, is for the simple reason that it is often said that organic produces as much or more as conventional, that conventional farming is evil and bad for everyone.

So I ask they who know that to be true, to come on in and recommend HOW to grow the same amount of grain as conventional.

It is simply about seeing as they know how I should not be growing grain, they therefore must know how I should be growing grain, and sharing their specifics with us on here.

To them, conventional grain growing includes dousing with chemicals, wrecking and killing the soil. So I ask, how is organic better, and more efficient? And what formula exactly would one use to attain yields competitive with conventional farming, while maintaining the soil, and keeping it healthy and nutrient rich?

I truly wish they would come out and give their formulas.

Regarding this Thatcher wheat I have a little jar of. It is a 1950's variety, and I sorely want to try it out and see how it would compare in a side by side trial with the newest fandangled ones out there.

I guess my point is, if what we do is bad, tell us the organic way???

I do like those videos elkhound! I will have to look into them further, some are LOOONGGG!!!

Those finger weeders were supposed to be really good in grains like corn, milo, and other row crops, tho Ive never seen one used, OR not used.

Dale Dale Dale.... yer not looking at this right. If you want to make money (I assume that is the ultimate goal here) raising organic wheat heres what you need to do. Encourage by whatever means necessary that ergot stuff. (organic LSD) You want lots and lots of it! That way you can develop a tremendous market for your wheat among those old diehard hippy acid freaks! You wont need high yields if you can sell it by the baggie for 100 bucks per bag!

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"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples habits." Mark Twain

Actually, here there are some folks that sell organic whatever you want to buy, but it's not organic. Best of both worlds, high yield and higher price.

I'm not terribly familiar w/ wheat production (we do organic barley, rye, vetch), and you are further north.. however.. I'd consider a winter wheat if possible as your weed pressure will be reduced. There are organic herbicides. I'm currently looking into the newest one, Suppress from Westbridge and hope to try it this spring on our farm. http://westbridge.com/suppress-herbi...-epa-approval/ I replied in your quote below.

Army surplus night vision goggles, so the neighbourhood doesn't see you spraying at night

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The internet - fueling paranoia and misinformation since 1873.

My experience or my neighbors was that "organic " weed killers don't work well and are very expensive when used in larger fields. I watched the neighbor lose his farm in five years, wasting lots of money on organic chemicals. Good thing they had good off the farm jobs, or they would not have lasted that long.

Dale,

I think you are right. There is a tremendous amount of misinformation and misguided sentiment, based on emotion, out there.

If people went back in time, they could understand why corn yields were approximately 25 bushels to the acre up until the 1940's. Corn was hoed by hand because it was basically the only weed control that was available at the time.

The problem is that someone goes out and makes some films and short videos about a topic, but they never really explore the whole story. These films put emotions and thoughts into people's minds, but they refuse to put all the facts into it, so, in the end, many times, they are just spinning the story of how they want it to be told.

One movie comes to mind:

Who Killed The Electric Car?

I'm telling you, that movie was a tremendous amount of hogwash. That movie did nothing but plant the idea that GM was a big bad company that did things to hurt their customers, and that they hated the environment.

The truth is that the EV-1 was a great experimental car. It was a technological break through for it's time. Those cars cost GM $100,000 to $150,000 each to build. They were leased to the public for less than $500 a month. In a nutshell, the EV-1 program was a giant test program for electric vehicles, during a time that car manufacturers were faced with lawsuits and pending legislation forcing all of them to sell electric cars.

GM was made a giant leap forward with the EV-1, and spent a ton of money developing it. They were worried that the other car companies would steal the technology, thus the private and very strict lease program with customers.

There were concerns then, as there is now, that the power grid may not currently be able to handle a tremendous spike in electric demand, should wide spread and mass sales of EV's become a reality in the marketplace.

No one ever wants to talk about what really happened with the EV-1.

No one wants to admit that the Tesla is basically a possibility because of the EV-1, and that the Tesla uses the same technology that GM developed and bought.

No one wants to look at the economic side of the EV-1. Yeah, the part about the $150,000 cost for each car, but were leasing them for $500 or less per month. Or, that an expensive gas car cost maybe $30,000 at the time.

Nor do they want to look at the high cost that GM spent maintaining those EV-1's in their lease program.

GM really screwed up in how they destroyed all of the EV-1 cars, especially after it was leaked to the public. I don't blame them for ending the program, even though I thought it was the neatest thing since sliced bread. It simply did not make sense for them to pour money into that program.

I have a friend who didn't even see the movie. He was told about it. He hates GM with a passion. He is like an ostrich with his head in the sand.

No amount of proof and facts will convince him differently of his emotions.

How are you going to seed 440 acres with that little jar of seed? LOL I think that so thin a sowing might just be the source of your weed pressure!

It actually seems like a strange question to me since here in IL wheat is often the most organically grown of commercial crops. Its rare to use any sprays and the nutrients are often supplied by the previous crop.

40 to 50 years ago I raised wheat more or less organically. I plowed, disced, harrowed, and then drilled in at about 90 lbs of seed. I did spread some commercial nitrate fertilizer, figuring it took about 1 lb of N for a bushel of wheat. I figured about 30 bushel of wheat on an average year. If we had too much winter kill, the fields had lots of weeds, then when we combined and sold the grain we were discounted because of the weed particles and seed, not to mention the loss of yield. As I said 30 bushel was a decent year and we sold the grain for maybe $2.50 per bushel. If the wheat didn't make good growth in the fall, then, we were faced with wind erosion in Feb and March. I remember taking a chisle plow to the field to try stopping the dirt blowing. Some years 20 bu per acre was more like it.
My point is: try doing that in this day and age. With the price fuel, fert., land, and equipment is today. A lot of guys went broke. The survivors learned and adapted. More land, more fertilizer, herbicides, fungicides, better seed varieties, GPS equipment. Now we get 50 to 60 bu per acre yield, roughly twice what we did then and the price is double what it was then.
Oh, I might add fuel was .30 cents/gal back then, and nitrate was $95 a ton and I could cover about 20 acres with a ton, and I could buy a good used 80 hp tractor for $2500 dollars.
I guess what I am saying is anyone who thinks we should go back to the old days, I wish you luck. I think your organic 440 acres of wheat better sell at a really high premium.

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* I'm supposed to respect my elders, but its getting harder and harder for me to find one. .*-

I wonder if you'd find more helpful info posting this on an actual farming board? Or, organic wheat growing board? Instead of a homesteading board that is.