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Written Question
Organic Farming: Cereals
Monday 30th November 2020

Asked by: Viscount Ridley (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the estimated proportion of the total certified organic area of the (1) wheat, (2) barley, (3) oats, (4) rye, and (5) triticale, crops produced from non-organic seed in England in each of the past three harvest years.

Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble

There is no certified organic farmland that uses wholly non-organic seeds, as use of organic seeds is a requirement for certification. In cases where, due to limited availability, a producer cannot source the required seeds in sufficient quantities, the organic regulation does, however, allow producers to use a mixture of organic and non-organic seeds. The organic legislation recognises that the seed sector is not sufficiently developed to meet the demand for organic seeds with a 100% requirement. In these cases, non-organic seeds must make up the minimum proportion possible and the mixture must be evenly mixed and spread across the land in question.

We do not have data on the area of land in England for which such authorisations have been granted. We can, however, supply figures for the total number of authorisations and quantities involved for the UK as a whole.

Non-organic arable seed used by organic farmers: 2017 to 2019

Crop

2017

2018

2020

Authorisations

Tonnes

Authorisations

Tonnes

Authorisations

Tonnes

Winter Wheat

80

126.3

69

142.9

90

107.0

Spring Wheat

11

32.2

23

98.4

20

59.1

Spring Barley

160

348.3

166

250.3

81

141.1

Winter Barley

39

84.4

26

66.5

34

151.0

Spring Oats

46

129.7

99

230.7

42

65.7

Winter Oats

29

59.5

18

42.3

17

17.6

Winter Rye

40

44.2

65

119.3

34

72.5

Spring Triticale

67

63.6

47

19.8

56

75.8

Winter Triticale

17

22.9

23

14.7

9

9.6

Due to variations in year to year harvest and market conditions affecting availability there is still variation. The long-term trend, however, is that over recent years the number of authorisations needed has on average decreased, due to increasing availability of organic seeds.

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