How Organic Farmers Kill Weeds _ MD F&H

It's a hot day in mid-June, but it's even hotter if you're a weed. Here at Moore Farm, just over the border in Clayton, Delaware, farmer Joseph Howard has rented a flamer, a machine designed to kill weeds with fire. So we're in a row that's already been flamed, and you can see, I mean, you can even hear the crunch. And that's just awesome. That's what we want to see and that's what we want to hear. So these are all going to die, or at least be stunted very heavily. The goal isn't to burn the field down, but just to scorch the weeds without killing the corn. We're angling the flame directly at the corn, and the growing point of the corn is still down pretty low in the soil, so we're not hurting the corn at all. What we're hurting is all these weeds, and we rupture those cell walls, which, you know, makes them die. They shrivel up, and you can see in other parts of the field that this has been doing a really good job. Since Joseph is an all-organic farmer, he can't spray synthetic herbicides, making the flamer one of his few options to get these pesky weeds growing in between the cornstalks. His parents, Luke and Allison, started an organic produce operation called Homestead Farms in the early 2000s. After graduating college and working around the country, Joseph came home to Millington, Maryland to take over and expand the family farm, which transitioned into organic grain and poultry. So every farm you go to, or every organic farm, they do it a different way, in their own way. So every year presents its own challenges that we have to, you know, face and overcome. One of those challenges is integrated weed management, or a set of tactics to suppress unwanted plants. For example, crop rotation changes what's grown in a field each year, so a problem weed for one crop can't gain a foothold when the field switches to something else. Tighter row spacing keeps crops closer together, so as they grow, they quickly shade out weeds. And cover crops, planted after the harvest, like clover or rye, protect the field in the off-season. And so by growing a cover crop, you're suppressing the weeds that are already in the soil, and it's going to grow faster than the weeds, and it'll suppress the weeds so they don't get out of hand, hopefully. Both organic and conventional farms use these practices, but there are limitations. With organic agriculture, we don't have easy fixes, you know, like that's one of the strengths of conventional agriculture. If they have a weed problem, they can come in and spray that crop to control those weeds so they don't become a problem. In organic agriculture, we don't have that option. One option they do have are cultivators. Multiple times a year, they'll turn over the soil and uproot weeds. So we'll come through on our final cultivation pass and really throw any soil up against these rows and bury all these weeds that have been flamed, and by then the corn will canopy and continue to shade out anything that's growing and put a stop to our weed issue. It appears the Howards are part of a growing trend. From 2008 to 2019, the amount of organic farmland in Maryland grew by 42 percent. We started experiencing it about five years after we started. Organic farming was gaining popularity around the world, and this area was no different, so there were other people who started the same as we did. And whether buying meat, produce, or grain, customers are willing to pay extra for organic. On the wholesale or commodity side, we tend to think of organic grain crops as being twice as expensive as conventional crops. So if conventional corn is $4 or $5, we would look at organic corn as being $9 or $10. That doesn't always hold true. Sometimes it's less than double, but for the most part, that's what we think about. With all the negative attention surrounding pesticides and higher prices for organic food, why don't all farmers make the switch? Well, it's not that simple. Organic and conventional are two different farming systems. You have to have the equipment to do one or the other, and you have to have a labor pool to do one or the other. You have to have a market to do one or the other. And if you don't have just one of those, that's a hard stop to changing up. Being certified organic requires you to go through a three-year transition process where you're farming the land under organic rules that are regulated by the USDA. We have an annual on-farm inspection. They look at our biodiversity areas. They look at our soil tests to make sure that we are constantly improving the condition of our ecosystem. So that process sometimes is a painful process because you have the additional expense of farming organically without that added premium. But once you get to the other side, then you start getting that premium and you can farm organically. Unfortunately, without synthetic fertilizer and pesticides, organic crops often have lower yields, making the switch impractical for some farmers. And despite many environmental benefits, there is concern that organic farming may result in higher greenhouse gas emissions due to lower yields requiring more land and fuel. But for all these differences, farmers still have a lot in common, including weeds. And to Joseph, it isn't a competition. Any time agriculture feeds on agriculture, no good comes from it. And whether it's organic or non-GMO or conventional, you should always be striving to do a better job and to educate your consumer on where your food's coming from. Hi, thanks for watching Maryland Farm and Harvest. 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