Organic crop husbandry

Key words principles of organic farming, weed, pest and disease control on organic farms, organic farming and the enviromnent, organic winter wheat, organic potato production. 

The ideas on organic farming started early in the twentieth centirry. In 1946 a group of like-minded farmers and scientists, including Lady Eve Balfoitr and Sir 

Currently in the EU, all states provide some form of support for organic farming through their rural development programmes. The amount of support varies widely between Members States. In England, payments are received if farmers enter the Organic Entry Level Stewardship scheme (OELS). Payments are highest for the first two years in-conversion. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have broadly similar schemes. 

Some organic crops such as cereals are cheaper to grow and grain prices are higher than for conventional crops but to be viable they cannot be grown too frequently in the rotation. Many field vegetables are much more expensive to 

During the annual inspection, input and output records as well as accounts have to be available. Crop records required include treatments applied for the last three years for land in-conversion crop rotation plans and cropping areas cropping history including yields application of farmyard manures and other 

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Organic crop husbandry - a model for sustainable crop systems... 

The success of organic crop husbandry also relies very much on effective weed management, although diverging views can be found regarding the necessity of clean crops versus the... 

Organic crop production Organic animal husbandry Total farms Veneto... 

As an organic farmer carmot always control the problerrrs once they appear it is important to get the hirsbandry correct at the begirming and to realise any potential problerrrs. The following is an outline of standard husbandry for a range of organic crops. 

Livestock husbandry is not explicitly addressed in the historical concepts of organic farming. Livestock provided manure and was therefore an important link in the crop and soil fertility chain. Livestock played a major role on its own only in biodynamic farming, especially cattle whose organs are described as important catalysts of processes and transmitters of cosmic energies (Steiner, 1929). Nonetheless, even the pioneers of biodynamic farming did not consider livestock husbandry from an ethical or animal welfare point of view. 

On the farm, a crop can be labeled as organic if it is produced on land where no prohibited substances have been applied for a minimum of three years prior to harvest. Animal products labeled as organic must come from livestock that have been fed organic feed, raised using humane animal husbandry systems, and that have not be treated with synthetic medications, except under very limited conditions set forth in the national list. 

Most dynamic factors that affect fruit quality are agronomic practices that can be changed by farmers over relatively short time spans. They are mainly related to fertility management and crop protection and other husbandry interventions and inputs such as pesticides, fertilisers, herbicides, thinning agents and so on. The permitted tools for these activities, however, differ greatly between conventional and organic fruit production. The consequences... 

The questions for research workers may thus vary widely but, in principle, will be quite different for organically-grown crops. Most of the chemical sprays are not permitted, so other remedies have to be found. This may mean that the problems for applied research are different and will often relate to whole husbandry systems and not just to specific practices. However, this is not confined to applied research. Interactions between plants and other organisms may need to be understood at a quite fundamental level, posing questions that simply would not arise in conventional crop production. 

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