Inspector’s role key to organic sector

Like me, Fergus Cronin took over from the late David Storey. While I took over this column , Fergus Cronin took over his organic inspections. We spoke about Fergus’s role as an organic inspector, and what that entails.

What was your background before you were an organic inspector?

My mother’s family were dairy farmers from Tarbert in north Kerry. I had worked as a vet since 1989, in mixed practice in west Clare, dealing with all creatures great and small, but primarily cattle. As a vet, I quite quickly began to realise that most of the problems I was trying to resolve were caused by too many livestock on the farm. Indirectly, a lot of the problems were caused by overstocking. I was a vet for Hugh Robson in Clare, and he told me the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association (IOFGA) were recruiting. That was 1997.

Can you expand on the kind of problems you were seeing in your practice as a vet?

The overstocking led to parasite problems and mineral deficiencies. It was often quite extreme. When you are forcing the grass with artificial fertiliser you get the quantity but not the quality. The roots aren’t going deep down into the soil. So I was seeing really severe selenium, copper and iodine deficiencies, leading to infertility and stillbirths, along with calves with white muscle disease and heart muscle defects. The slatted houses and unsuitable breeds caused problems too. Scuttery calves without enough bedding, on cold drafty concrete slatted houses.Charolais in swampy parts of west Clare didn’t make a lot of sense really. Farmers were told to produce more, but what was being done just didn’t suit the location.

I felt part of the chemical industry as a vet, using chemicals to deal with the problems which were caused by chemical fertilisers.

So what’s the typical numbers of inspections in a year?

It’s quite varied. With IOFGA I’ve done 65 some years, and up to 150 other years. It tends to be more standardised with the Biodynamic Association, where I do about 28 each year.

What are the major differences between organic and conventional now?

One of the big differences between organic and conventional is the level of planning the organic farmer has to do. He has to be really conscious as to what he’s doing — stocking rate, levels of production, fodder. So the farms I love in the West are the lads whose only outlay is silage plastic. They have the stocking rate just on the sweet point where they farm, it just works easily. There are no vet inputs. And the economics work, they are buying in very little feed apart from for weaning. They’ve no fertility inputs, they don’t have to have any — they have figured out that economically those things don’t pay. Production rates will be significantly lower than conventional, but what they earn is theirs. Of course, these sorts of guys are also very easy to inspect.

Sounds like it can be enjoyable?

I love seeing comfy, well-housed cattle. When I see cattle on a lovely bed of straw, lying there chewing their cud, it warms the heart. I love the farmers who don’t scrimp on the straw, who see it as a fertility investment, who use lots of it and have happy cattle — cattle who then don’t eat half as much silage as they aren’t trying to keep themselves warm or stand all day to keep warm. The farms I love are the ones where the farmer has converted. This can take more than five years for the farmer himself to go “this works” — for him to psychologically, consciously get the organic way of producing. That’s when the farmer is embracing organics, when he sees it as sustainable viable system.