Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Chatting => Chatting on the Plot => Topic started by: rowlandwells on October 11, 2020, 16:07
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a friend and me where talking about our potato crops as you do and it came up in our conversation that my friend was thinking about growing an acre of potatoes next year to sell at his gate well being a farmer he would i suppose
OK that sounds alright but then he said he was going to sell them as organic potatoes so growing them as organic without no chemical fertilizer? but could one use an organic feed and would that count as organically grow potatoes i ask myself
but then i said i thought you had to be registered as an organic grower to sell organic produce including potatoes because anyone could say they where organic when there not? he said i was talking out my hat
so we basically agreed to disagree and left it at that but I'm still not convinced he can sell his potatoes as organic grown without some sort of proof there actually organically grown
does anyone know if he's rite and I'm wrong because i said if I'm wrong I'L eat my hat maybe you could pass me the salt :D :D
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You are right RW
You must register with one of the organic control bodies if you produce or sell organic food and you want to label it as organic.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/organic-food-labelling-rules
He could grow with an organic feed, he just needs to find out which are allowed, though..
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Only a farmer would think along those lines! >:(
Cheers, Tony.
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Yep I’m with you & mum there RW, the most he could say was that they were grown without chemicals, plus he’d need to use organic seed potatoes I think, which will cost him a pretty penny I’d have thought. You could contact garden organic , nearby to me in Coventry & ask for a leaflet or information pack for him, that should shut him up lol plus you won’t need a new hat :lol:
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From listening to one of our local dairy farmers I think he would also have to wait a couple of years for the previous chemicals to leave the soil so that the land itself is now certified organic as well as the future produce grown on it.
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From listening to one of our local dairy farmers I think he would also have to wait a couple of years for the previous chemicals to leave the soil so that the land itself is now certified organic as well as the future produce grown on it.
That is true if you want to use the term organic. There are a set of procedures to go through to get that certification, to ensure people are getting what they pay for.
I guess you could sell them as 'grown with only natural fertilisers' and that would be a more realistic description. You would have to say in the small print that the land has previously been treated with other fertilisers and that the seed potatoes were not organic.
There is a huge upsurge in interest in organic food and the like at the moment. You can't blame a farmer for wanting a slice of the pie :)
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thanks for that info snowdrops Il follow that one up :D
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Between five and seven years to get registered organic - lot of costs, paperwork and hoops to jump through.