The US Department of Agriculture recently announced that the rules for organic livestock production were getting more strict. Basically, the new rules require that organic livestock must spend at least one third of the year grazing on pasture and that 30 percent of their feed must come from grazing. Some certified organic producers, particularly giant corporate dairies, were meeting the letter of the old standard by “providing access to pasture” but trampling its spirit because the access was limited or the pasture that was available was limited, etc. In other words the “pastoral” life style that one envisions for an organic milk cow with green grass, fresh air, and plenty of elbow room may have looked more like a crowded barn with a packed dirt lot. Of course, with organic feed instead of conventional.
Old school organic dairymen complained about this for two reasons. First, meeting the spirit of the rule with meaningful access to real pasture is more expensive than the packed-dirt-lot approach, and those who were doing it correctly were at a competitive disadvantage to the profit-uber-alles crowd. Second, the old school organic producers felt that consumers were getting ripped off and would be pissed off when they found out. This would eventually be bad for business as the label of certified organic got watered down, slowly but surely. Amazingly, the USDA, usually in the pocket of huge corporate agriculture interests, actually modified the rules in favor of the smaller operators and in favor of the consumers! There is a spirit to organic agriculture that cannot be codified but in this case the USDA seems to be trying to approximate it.
Why limit the rule to only 4 months per year though? I am not a dairyman and actually know very little about cows but I do raise hogs and I want them on pasture as much as possible. However, wet weather makes this aspiration impractical in most parts of the US, especially on the wet side of the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest. Unlike ruminants (cows, sheep, goats, etc.), hogs like to dig up soil and eat the bugs, worms, and roots they find below the surface. They also seem to dig for entertainment and are fond of collecting the odd trinket they find in their excavations, caching long lost rusty chunks of steel in the back of their range shelters. They eat the green stuff too and benefit greatly from doing so but they can turn over a patch of grass faster than a rototiller, especially if it is wet.
6 week old pigs on a fresh lot of grass
The same pigs on the same lot - 2 hours later!
As pictured above, we always provide some outside area for our hogs but more than a little during the wet months is a losing proposition. A significant amount of money is invested in a good stand of pasture and hogs can blow through that money in a hurry. Beyond the time and money invested, working soil when it is too wet has long term adverse effects on tilth and fertility. Cows don’t dig like hogs but they are very heavy and can do a lot of damage just by walking around so dairy farmers need to limit pasture access in wet weather too.
We are waiting for the new rules to be published but I don’t think they will apply to organic hog production. October farrowed pigs will go the butcher in April or May and, depending on the weather may only have a few weeks on pasture – not nearly enough to meet the four month or 30% requirements. However, we will continue to provide our hogs continuous access to pasture when the weather is dry and to an outdoors exercise area when the weather is wet. Winter pigs will be fed certified organic grains and will get their veggies from crops harvested and stored when the weather was drier – hay, apples, pumpkins, and forage beets and turnips.
