INTRODUCTION
For most farmers, converting to organic farming involves two procedures:
a) Registering with one of the approved organic certification bodies, which is a legal requirement;
b) Application for Scottish Government financial support, which is voluntary, and which this form relates to.
The purpose of this RDC Organic Viability Proposal is to allow you to provide an overall picture of what your proposed organic unit will look like, once it has been converted. It allows you to demonstrate to the Scottish Government that it will be technically viable in terms of rotation, stock number and animal health, by showing some evidence that you understand the main requirements of converting to organic.
You must submit this Proposal form to your chosen Certification Body for assessment. Once they have approved it they will sign the form. The signed form must then be submitted along with your RDC application.
This Organic Viability Proposal is an overview, not a detailed Conversion Plan. You will still have to complete a detailed Conversion Plan and submit it to your Certification Body before it formally accepts you into conversion. If you wish, this can be done after your RDC application has been approved.
GUIDANCE NOTES ON ORGANIC VIABILITY PROPOSAL QUESTIONS
Question 2. ORGANIC STANDARDS
Converting to organic farming involves registering with one of the organic certification bodies and adhering to the standards published by that certification body. You cannot do this unless you have obtained a copy of its standards and have familiarised yourself with these standards. Each certification body offers a conversion pack which contains a copy of its standards, which normally costs about £30. A list of approved certification bodies with their contact details is shown in Annex 1. For further sources of information see Annex 3.
Question 3. PROPOSED CONVERSION TIMETABLE
You can decide yourself, in consultation with your chosen Certification Body, the date on which you wish to start your conversion period formally (although there is a time limit if you are successful in your application for RDC Organic Conversion Support). You need to understand the implications of the choice of start date in relation to when you will be eligible to sell your first full organic status crop and livestock.
A full organic status crop is a crop which has been sown or planted into land which has completed its 24-month conversion period. Simultaneous conversion of land and livestock is a process, which has to be agreed with your certification body, in which you undertake to follow the organic standards for livestock from the date that you started converting the land. There is a significant advantage in this for beef producers since it allows them to sell stock as organic immediately after the 24-month conversion period is completed (provided the animal was born at least three months after the start conversion period).
This question also asks you to specify whether you intend to convert all of your planned organic unit in one go or whether you intend to undertake the conversion in stages. Although a staged conversion may be appropriate where the current farming system requires major changes (e.g. an existing all-arable farm), please note that simultaneous conversion will not be possible with a staged conversion.
Question 4. LAND AREA TO BE CONVERTED
In Question 4.1 please indicate the total area of the organic unit which you propose to establish (in stages, if a staged conversion is planned), and the area of land in the remainder of the business which will not be converted.
In Question 4.2 please indicate how the proposed organic unit is broken down according to the three main land types, i.e. ploughable land to be put into rotation, permanent grassland and rough grazing. This will be used, together with the information in Questions 5.1 and 5.2, in calculations to assess the viability of your proposed stocking rate.
Question 5. CROP ROTATION
The crop rotation is crucially important to the viability of organic crop production in terms of generating fertility, and minimising weed, pest and disease problems. On rotational land, the certification body will expect you to have a balanced rotation, i.e. a balance between fertility-building, or nitrogen fixing, crops (i.e. legumes such as clover, peas, beans) and exploitative crops (i.e. non-legume crops). The minimum proportion of legume crops, including grass/clover, in the rotation will vary with the quality of the soil, but a good rule of thumb is to assume that you need at least 50% legume crop in the rotation, and that the length of an arable phase should not extend beyond four years. Please insert in Question 5.1 what your proposed main crop rotation will be, once fully established (including the grass/clover ley). In future, from time to time, you may wish to make changes to the crops grown during the arable phase, but you should be extremely wary of making changes to the length of the fertility-building phase.
On the basis of your proposed crop rotation, and the total area of land which you propose to put into organic rotation, you will be able to calculate the average size of the rotational blocks, and hence the annual area of each crop type grown on the farm (Question 5.2), including grassland.
Question 6. STOCKING RATE
The certification body will use the information that you provide in this question, together with the area of good grass and forage (i.e. annual forage crops, grass/clover ley and good permanent grass), which you calculated in Question 5, to assess whether your proposed stocking rate under organic management is feasible. You will be unable to use artificial nitrogen fertiliser under organic management so your stocking rate will be limited to that which can be supported by the clover in your grassland. Good grass/clover leys with good clover content will support a stocking rate of 1.6 Livestock Units per hectare (including the winter forage requirement), but if your swards are poorer in quality you will have to assume a lower stocking rate than this. If you wish to make this calculation yourself, you can use the table in Annex 2, for both your existing system and your proposed organic system. Please note that this question and this calculation are not relevant for farms on which most of the land is rough grazing, where the stocking rate is already so low that it is unlikely to change following conversion.
Question 7. ANIMAL HEALTH PLAN
A regularly reviewed and updated Animal Health Plan is an essential element of your organic registration. You may already be familiar with, and operating to, an Animal Health Plan. If not, you need to demonstrate that you are aware of how to set about preparing such a Plan.
Question 8. PROPOSED MARKETING STRATEGY
In the long term, an organic farm will only be viable if the farmer is aware of and producing what the market wants. This question allows you to outline what your main market outlet will be and to describe in detail the market research that you have carried out before starting the conversion. In the box in Question 8, you should list the contacts you have made (with dates) to research the market (e.g. advisers, processors, merchants, etc.).
You must then sign and date the form after section 8, and pass it to your chosen Certification Body for their assessment.
Annex 1 - List of approved organic Certification Bodies Annex 1
Annex 2 - Livestock unit calculator Annex 2
Annex 3 - Sources of information Annex 3