“I got into organic production in 1994 because at that time it was so easy. Our farm was already being run organically.”

He quit spraying because it made him ill and said he still feels the effects if he walks across a lawn that’s been chemically treated.

However, Sheehan and his family also believe in green production.

“Animals are really very inefficient,” he said. “They need seven pounds of feed to gain one lb. of weight. And a lot of guys don’t follow the blue book. Even in natural beef production, the animals can eat any kind of feed. Anything they eat, we eat. We are at the top of the food chain, so all this stuff is in us, I’m sure. That’s important to me.”

Sheehan, who is president of the Alberta Organic Producers Association, said many producers with marginal land are growing feed and raising livestock organically but aren’t certified.

“There’s a lot of advantages to having your farm certified organic, but some people just don’t want to bother with the regulations and paperwork.”

His farm is certified under the Organic Crop Improvement Agency, one of seven certifying bodies in Alberta that meet the standard of the Canadian Organic Regime.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency oversees the process.

Sheehan’s Sunnie Valley Farm is one of 370 certified organic producers in Alberta.

A second generation farmer, Sheehan grew up on the farm his father developed in the 1960s. He and his high school sweetheart, Roseanna, have raised four children on their farm and hope they will carry on the enterprise.

The Sheehans farm 1,200 acres, growing organic grain for a cash crop and running 140 mostly Black Angus cattle on a series of 20 plots.

Some years they buy more yearling cattle, depending on how much feed they have.

Their 40 acre fields are divided by electric wire fence and shelterbelts of mainly acute leaf willow. The fields are rotated annually.

The Sheehans raise all their own feed in a normal year, mainly by producing silage. They finish their own cattle except 30 replacement heifers each year.

The market returns they receive are 50 percent more than that of conventional slaughter cattle.

They believe a 12-year rotation allows them to be sustainable as an organic operation.

They plant and grow hay for pasture for the first five years. Manure application is done in the fourth year.

In the sixth year, the pasture is plowed, followed the next year by oats, which are sold as a cash crop at a price 50 to 100 percent higher than non-organic grain. The straw is baled for the livestock.

In the eighth year, they plant barley intercropped with sweet clover, which gives the barley a good shot of nitrogen that is released late in the season.

“This makes a feed with 15 percent protein content on a dry matter basis,” Sheehan said.

“It’s remarkable, really, but I’ve got the feed analysis to prove it.”

The straw is used for the livestock.

The clover is plowed in as green manure in the ninth year of the rotation because it is a biannual.

In the 10th year, the field is put into straight barley, which is used mainly as feed and silage. Some may also be sold.

By now the field has returned to hay, which is seeded in the 11th year of the rotation.

In the 12th year, the hay is cut for feed.

Sheehan said organic beef production can pose difficult challenges.

For example, all cattle on feed during the grazing season next year must also have access to pasture, so that a minimum of 30 percent of their dry matter intake is from grass.

“It’s going to make it so guys don’t grain finish cattle in the summer,” he said.

Despite all the rules, however, he still feels organic production is the best way to go.

November 4, 2010 edition of Western Producer