Oliver Moore: Big opportunity in UK organic market
Organic farmers are importing feed from the UK to such an extent that there seems to be a real gap to fill by growers here.
Synchronising organic livestock needs and the abilities of the organic tillage sector to deliver is a development job that would benefit all involved — but who will take this on?
Last week, we profiled organic tillage farmers, the Workmans of county Louth. Unusually, they also turn their crops into a commercial product.
Ironically, considering the needs just outlined, when they went organic in 2006, they were “finding it increasingly difficult to find a market for organic grain in Ireland. To sell our crops we were having to sell into the UK market which didn’t make sense,” as Andrew Workman told me: “We needed to look at other ways to sell our grain.”
One of the other ways was to process and value-add themselves. Andrew tells the story of how this happened:
“Whiteriver Mill in our nearby town of Dunleer was where we started. A beautiful traditional stone water mill, still in working order, we found we could produce a fantastic, nutty, traditional, extra coarse flour from our wheat.
"With the help of the owner who knew the workings of the mill which has been in his family for many generations, our first sales of flour went out locally.”
It built from that small base.
“Within a year, demand outstripped what the mill could produce and we began to see an opening in the market for other organic flours from grains such as spelt and rye.
"For this we needed a faster more efficient milling system and it was on the way back from our son’s wedding in Poland that we happened to come across a French mill used by a German organic farmer.
"This electric stone mill was in our price range and suited the volume of grain we were producing on the farm. We also use a reconditioned stoneground mill for the extra coarse flour.”
Germany stays in the story, as Andrew continued: “We sourced rye and spelt seed from Germany and invested in second hand grain cleaners, gravity separators and a de-huller.
"These are essential pieces of equipment required to produce a clean, weed free, quality grain ready for milling.”
This is a full spectrum sowing to customer service.
“We do all this ourselves, because as a family run business we have the unique selling point of being able to see the grains through from sowing them in the ground to harvesting, cleaning, milling, packaging and distribution. We have complete control over the quality of flour we send out.”
An aspect farmers often aren’t used to is selling a product. How did this develop for the Workmans?
“It has been a steep learning curve particularly from the selling and marketing aspect. However, jumping into the car with samples for wholefood stores, artisan bakeries and restaurants we soon began to get great feedback and a much better return on our organic grains.
"We sell small 1kg bags of flour but there is also a growing market in bulk flour which goes to our wonderful local artisan bakery ‘Knead’ in Dunleer. Sarah Richards ‘Seagull Bakery’ in Waterford, ‘Regale Biscuit Factory’ in Cork, ‘Base Wood Fired Pizza’ Company in Dublin and Graham Neville’s restaurant ‘Residence Forty one’ to name but a few as well as our first consignment to Kuwait.”
Andrew “is currently working on a sifter to produce really fine sifted wheat and spelt flours. Interest in our organic flour is increasing generally.”
He concludes that we “love what we do and we produce flour for passionate bakers around the country.”
