Wanted: organic cereal growers to help meet healthy demand

The popularity of organics continues to grow every year, and the supply of UK organic livestock products is primary to satisfying that demand. As well as requiring stringent management standards, organic livestock must be fed feeds comprising organic raw materials, the proportional organic content of which has been ratcheted up, and will move from 85% to 90% at the start of 2008. 

Unfortunately, there are insufficient organic cereals to meet the growing demand for organic livestock production.  Self sufficient in conventional grain, the UK has been exporting its surplus for decades, and will soon be utilising it for fuel generation. The supply situation for organic cereals, particularly wheat, is quite different.  The UK is only 40% self sufficient, with the balance being imported - this year it should have come from the Ukraine. However, political changes there have stopped the flow of their grain, forcing the price up – 75% from the first price for the season! 

Fears of running out of cereals have forced prices to exceptional highs that have attracted (and funded) supplies from the remotest of suppliers.  As a result over 25% of the UK’s annual organic wheat requirement left Kazakhstan in February by train, arriving in Latvia before shipment to the UK; a tortuous supply chain, contrary to the organic ideal of `local sourcing’.

Organic feed compounders have had to pay higher prices for cereals to ensure supply.  Humphrey Feeds Ltd, a dedicated poultry feed compounder and manufacturer of organic poultry feeds, have had to increase their prices substantially, but are worried that customers are not receiving commensurate price increases for their organic eggs from the supermarkets.

Martin Humphrey, production director, insists “that the ultimate solution is for UK farmers to convert land to producing organic cereals”.

Currently only 15% of UK land registered as `organic’ is committed to arable production; partly because the price of organic wheat has been, until recently, less than 2 times the price of conventional wheat. At the moment organic wheat is nearly 3 times the conventional price, and the new crop is about 2.5 times the price of conventional wheat.  Mr Humphrey’s continues “The long-term demand for organic produce is rising, so too is the inclusion rate of organic commodities, so that by 2011 the agricultural fraction of diets needs to be 100% organic.  That sounds like a growing market, with premium opportunities - surely a good reason for more conversions to organic cereals?”