Farming for all of my life time has been a marginal business at best and in the last few years most farmers would be happy even to break even. Its time to consider "value added" options and on of those options is proving to be economically viable and certainly a hit in the grocery stores and that is becoming an organic farm operation.
It is almost four years now since I first talked to one farmer who had been painstakingly going through the process of becoming an organic farmer. He had a little more than a quarter section of farm land that he and his family used primarily as a hobby farm but he had decided to try out the certification programme and his first crop of organic flax was ready to harvest. As I said that was four years ago and that farmer discovered that from his single quarter section of land growing organic crops made it possible for him to leave his day job and he took early retirement to spend more time on the organic operation and financially he was well ahead of the game.
In most cases an organic crop can easily result in return to the producer of almost double the conventional farmland produces. The problem is that you have to stick to the rules and it takes time to get your land to the point where it can be certified as organic.
A few miles north of Tisdale, the South East quarter of 30-46-14-W2 is an established organic quarter section and available for lease. The owner is accepting tenders up until February 28th, 2007 for this coming crop year. If you are interested you can contact the owner by e-mail, if you are looking for something a little different and with a value added component it is definitely worth looking into.
