Grainswest - Spring 2024

Spring 2024 grainswest.com 41 “Our agronomy bill is significantly more now than when we were conventional.” — Chris Simeniuk Photo:CourtesyofChrisandLeahSimeniuk you’re killing the biology that’s in the soil. If you can till it in the spring and then seed it and leave it all summer to be fed [by biological activity], you have something to work with the following spring.” The price one pays to purchase land determines the profit it must generate annually. “Much of that land in that higher dollar-value belt has to grow a crop every single year,” said Strebchuk. To go organic and plant cover crops during fallow years is more practical in a region with lower land value. Strebchuk pointed out a lot of organic farmers, himself included, farm marginal land, graze cattle and do not necessarily grow a crop in every field each year. Joash Siemens saw the opportunity to profit on marginal land by transitioning from conventional to organic. He owns 58th Parallel Organics, a farm near La Crete. When the government sold bushland in his region of the Peace Country more than a decade ago, he joined the throng of farmers who purchased it for organic production to fetch premium prices. “You’ve got to transition the land, but for this land that was coming out of bush, it was instantly organic,” he said. His purchase included 320 acres of bush. He guesses more than half of these farmers have gone back to conventional farming due to weed problems or the hassle of organic paperwork. He decided to transition the balance of his approximately 3,100 organic acres of owned and rented land to produce organic oats, peas and wheat. “We felt like we were making more money on our organic land than double the acres on conventional, but then it came with a lot of other benefits such as not having to have the chemical around in the yard, and it seems like we have better soil health,” he said. Becoming an organic farmer was a risk management strategy, he added. When he was a conventional farmer, the high overhead for fertilizer and chemical inputs meant greater loss in a drought year, one that had to be recouped the following season. As a young farmer with a growing business, he decided he doesn’t want to have money-losing years. “I might have years when I make a lot less, but you’re always kind of working ahead,” he said. This type of financial progress appeals to him. While farming the northerly reaches of the Peace has its challenges, the region’s long growing season is a huge upside. “We get sunlight 20 hours a day, so we grow really, really good oats up here,” said Siemens. “I’ve had different oat buyers say we grow the best oats in North America.” Siemens uses zero chemical inputs but finds he is well positioned to battle bug pressure. “When we were conventional, we’d always be spraying for bugs,” he said. Grasshoppers and worms used to be a major challenge in the farm’s canola, but the problem has faded. “There’s a healthy balance in it. You have your beneficials, along with your predators.” Similarly to Strebchuk and Wood, weeds are his biggest challenge. He said he couldn’t manage them without his European Garford in-row cultivator. Its camera-guided shovels till the 10-inch space between rows. He pairs this tool with a strategic four-year rotation of oats, peas and a year of cover crops. He fallows 25 per cent of his land each year. Though organic crops are grown quite successfully in northern Alberta, trucking costs are a massive challenge for smaller organic farmers where there’s no local buyer. Siemens solved this problem with the creation of his own grain trading business, Simply Grain. “I can collect everything together, figure out the quality, clean it if I need to and then sell it further,” he said. The symbiotic relationship benefits farmers who prefer not to handle their own grain marketing or don’t want to truck half-loads of grain south. RESEARCH AND DATA NEEDED Increasing land competition in their area near Alix prompted Chris and Leah Simeniuk to go organic on their 1,400-acre farm in 2015. They saw an opportunity to produce more revenue per acre by fully transitioning from conventional. Each year, they sow half their acres to cash crops that include wheat, barley, rye and mustard, and the balance is sown to cover crops.