To mix things up a bit more, I've been thinking about @harryboglione 's idea of growing naked oats. We've not grown them before and people who have, give mixed reviews. But I think they are worth offering to you as a fourth option. They are allegedly good aggressive growers and swamp weeds to an extent, but yield 25% less (when salesmen tell me that, I realise it means half, in my experience) than normal 'husked' oats. But they sell for twice as much and, as Harry says, they are much in demand from people who mind what they eat.

Ive been thinking it would be good to get an idea of what we might do with any produce as I feel such information will help guide us in our choice of crop.

I see a lot of interest in spelt, I'm quite excited by the idea of naked oats and have been doing a bit of research.

If we are to decide by Sunday we have very little time to explore potential buyers, which I find slightly discomforting.

I guess Gails Bakery may be interested? (@romymiller ?) But maybe only in wheat or spelt?

I wondered about the three big wholefood co-operatives Infinity (Brighton), Essential (Bristol) and Suma (Leeds - IIRC). They're likely to be interested in the Our Field project/story, as it is really a novel co-operative initiative, and in turn stocking our produce.

The volumes we are likely to have, I imagine, will be in the region of what they may be able to handle?

I'll try and call them tomorrow.

Anyone else got any ideas?

Ive made a stab at starting a collaborative spreadsheet so that we can get an idea of the financial implications of our crop choice.

There are quite a few boxes empty and I've maybe made some wrong assumptions or misunderstood some stuff.

I've used data from this thread and from the discussions we had on the Our Field site visit. If you didnt make it to the visit I think everything should be in the youtube video that was circulated after the event - I made brief notes of the figures etc. https://board.net/p/OurFieldVisit

The editable spreadsheet is at https://ethercalc.org/OurField some of the cells have notes - just put your cursor over them.

Ideally we would have a few more of the missing values completed before we make the decision. Possibly some things I've added there arent relevant and some more things could be added.

Ethercalc is like a GooogleDoc spreadsheet, if you know what that means, if you dont it means the text is saved as you type and anyone viewing should be able to see it appear live. There is no need to save after any edit. If you do a load of editing it may be wise to save it to a spreadsheet on your computer (select all the cells and then copy and paste into your spreadsheet program)

If you want to look at an uneditable version (print version?) you can go to https://ethercalc.org/OurField/form - but then you cant point and read notes or edit.

Darren, All. I've added to the spreadsheet. Figures are just guesses off top of my head so need to be improved. Guessed yields with the companion crops and guessed prices. Not sure about seed costs, nor input costs, rent or John's operations costs.
You can play with the prices, costs and yields with this - don't take my figures as being accurate. I currently have with wheat & beans giving best return, but I doubt we would make milling quality without N fertiliser so price likely to be ~£20/t lower.
My vote is for spelt if a reasonable yield and price can realistically be achieved.

I rang around the wholefood wholesale coops and didnt have much luck. The bulk buyers at both Infinity and Suma are not working today but will be back on Monday & Essential Trading wouldnt put me through by phone, but gave me an email address of their head of purchasing.

I also tried Doves Farm to check what interest they would have for things other than Spelt, but everyone there who would be able to help is away at a trade fair in Glasgow till Wednesday.

I'd like to propose delaying this decision for a bit if possible (if that's not happening already?)

I wonder about the energy people within the Our Field group have to take on work organising sales, processing or marketing. There have been some mentions of interest in this sides of things and I'm happy to get involved. To me it feels like this would have good potential to make the project more viable / successful / interesting. Not sure exactly how that would work - maybe we need to open a new thread that can be joined by people who are interested in getting involved in that kind of stuff?

Hi Darren, thanks for taking the time to put together a spread sheet and make some initial calls. It might be worth us getting in touch with Sharpham Park re spelt. I'd be interested to join the potential marketing thread/ team & try and support. Although I'll be upfront in saying that I have zero experience.

As facilitator I am persuaded by Darren's @darren4 argument that it could be interesting to gauge the possible market for the end product; and that if others in the group have time and energy to put to this research, they should have longer than the days until Sunday.

The choice of crop is probably the single most important decision the group makes, and since there is now a rising interest in the matter, _ we should hold off the vote to allow more voices to be heard, and with more evidence. _

There will be a deadline by which John needs to research the availability of seed, and he needs sufficient lead time to place the order in good time for Spring planting - but for now let us assume the deadline __ will be held back at least 7 days.__

If anyone wishes to comment on this decision to delay the vote - please do so on the admin thread, not here and for that reason I will copy this message there.

I've just lost a long and detailed comment somehow. So, I'm going to be more brief now. Brevity is probably a better way to go.

Bakeries will source flour from a mill who get the wheat mainly from a grain merchant.
Large bakeries will demand a minimum of 13% protein in their flour.
The UK climate prohibits such levels without the use of a lot of nitrogen and normally this is using artificial nitrogen.
Who would be your local mill and or grain merchant @johncherry ?

Smaller bakeries, especially those using sourdough with longer proving of their doughs, might be interested, Ben at E5 in London Fields can also mill his own grain. I'm in contact with Ben and can ask if he's interested. His demand is mainly organic but I can ask. He will want to know quantities.

Essential, Infinity and Suma will not use much raw grain, though they will take some but normally through an existing supplier and at a certain specification.
I'm in contact with these businesses fairly regularly so let me know if you get stuck finding the right person @darren4

Modern cereal breeding has resulted in higher yield but other qualities have lost out. There are ways forward however. From sourdough to cross composite populations and even naked barley.
Here are links -

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/apr/16/recipes.foodanddrink

http://www.organicresearchcentre.com/?go=Research%20and%20development&page=Plant%20breeding

https://andyhowardnuffield15.wordpress.com/2015/12/08/dr-martin-wolfe-wakelyns-agroforestry-suffolk-england-7th-december-2015/

https://mobile.twitter.com/naked_barley

Its occurred to me that I may have made a slightly dubious assumption with regards to yields - if I understand correctly a companion crop is likely to reduce yield of the 'main' crop so wheat yield would be down if grown with faba beans? (faba are broad beans with small beans). I think possibly in the other cases theres likely to be less of an impact as the companion will be smaller/less light competitive?

@stevenjacobs you appear to be mostly talking about wheat/spelt - the expected quantity should be somewhere around 25 -55 tonnes - although these figures may need some adjustment when considering companions.

I might have said before - I'm really interested in the oat option.

Thanks @darren4 & I too favour oats ideally, however the processing of oats is specialised and we may struggle to get an oat mill that will take our relatively small volume, but I'd take guidance from @johncherry on this, I don't know his local markets or even what he may know of further afield..?
We could consider approaching European Oat Millers? They have an oat milling facility in Bedford.

I welcome the opportunity to spend more time thinking about the end product and what an Our Field product could be marketed as - what the values are and how to position this. From the ourfieldproject.org website we have already captured some of this: Living the farmer's journey, reinventing farm economics & sharing farmer risk, but I think we would need to do more. We also have the problem with ourfield.org (parks in Costa Rica) and ourfield.com (footballing app). So we could focus on the product meeting values of either an ourfieldproject (OFP) benchmark or establishing a community supported agriculture (CSA) benchmark - see more about CSA's here: https://communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk/what-is-csa/

Hopefully others know much more about this than me. A bit of a brain dump on a possible benchmark, meeting OFP:
* sharing farmers' risks: allowing a more innovative approach
* collaborative decision making: in depth consideration and general consensus
* focus on sustainability: to ensure better and longer term outcomes
* natural production mechanisms: reducing additives
* building on long term soil viability: focusing on healthy soil
* resisting large scale commercial pressure: not being driven solely by commercial price or yield

As far as outlets go:
* Wheat: bread making
* Spelt: artisan bread making
* Oats: wholefood shops
* Naked oats: specialised wholefood and artisan outlets
I buy special flours from bakery bits http://www.bakerybits.co.uk/bakery-ingredients/flour.html
Also to point out the Scotland the bread standard and assurance system for certifying grain see http://www.scotlandthebread.org/growing-and-research/ and they are also bulking up Scottish heritage grains.

Many thanks @darren4 and @stevenjacobs for your foresight and work on production costs and marketing. What we normally do, once we've established that there basically is a market for a product, is grow it and see what we end up with in the shed. We can then test it for protein/gluten or whatever and sell it on that basis, when we know how much we've got. We sell most of what we grow through a farmer's co-op here in the village, they have a good relationship with local mills, though a lot of these are grinding animal feed as much as anything. We are moving oats at the moment into European Oat Millers. I suspect, Steven, that you're right and that they'd be a bit sniffy about taking an odd lorry-load and treating it specially, but it's worth the ask. Anyone want to buy a little mill and grind and bag what we grow?

Meanwhile I'll get some prices of seed etc and try to fill in Darren's spread sheet, but I know from experience that, come harvest, the figures might well be out by a large percentage...

I like the idea of growing something for people to eat, rather than animals, and in particular, it would be a shame to end up feeding animals destined for being eaten. Would be nice if the Our Field brand (however that turns out) was identified with quality food for those who do care about the ethical sourcing of what they eat, as well as the environmental and health related issues. I looks like others have a far better grasp on the technical issues than me!

Hi Every one. I tend to agree with Johns approach to marketing a corp. As there are so many variables in producing a crop that it is relay hard to have any idea of quality or quantity. Especially when we are going to be experimenting.

What i do think is worth considering is weather or not we would like to do some value adding processing to a % of the crop or not. If we process some of our crop it gives us the opportunity to make a higher profit off the processed crop by direct marketing it to relaters and consumers. This will require more work tho but i think could be done well with such a divers group of us. Or alternatively we could just process some for the groups use which could save every one some money. If we where to Grow naked oats we could role them for porridge or muesli. In order to do this We just need a role mill which are very easy to come by. Alternatively if we grew another grain we could get some milled into flower.

We have a roll mill at home :) I also really like the idea of naked oats. We have been looking into growing them at home too.

Thanks for the spreadsheet (and thinking behind it) @darren4 - I do love a good spreadsheet :)

As I have more of an interest in flour - wheat is now my preference as we are companion planting - I have emailed a few local and/or potentially community minded mills I am already aware of to test the water and see if they might want to work with us on the project. There seem to be many more we could contact once we know for sure what we are growing and rough quantities.

So far I have contacted:
http://www.brixtonwindmill.org
http://www.wrightsflour.co.uk
http://www.nationalmillsweekend.co.uk/pages_wind/wicken.htm
http://www.wessexmill.co.uk - this one has already called me back to say they only take grain from within 40 miles of the mill (we are outside of that) and 1 lorry (I guessed our quantity to be around 30 tonnes based on Darren's ss) would be too small for them to process. Emily was very nice (and offered to give a tour if I or anyone wanted to look around the mill) but she suggested we look for a very small local mill or we would likely end up with our grain mixed with others to ensure it meets quality standards.

Added since original post:
https://claybrookewatermill.co.uk
http://talgarthmill.com

I shall update this post if I hear back from the others but it seems a bit catch 22 without much info to offer people.

I have not given any though as to what we might do with any sell-able companion crop. Although this may only be beans (in what % of the output?) as I think the under-story suggestions from John are not crop giving plants.

Wendy

Wendy - a great idea to contact some mills. There is a small water mill close to me, I haven't been there yet but use their flour which is very good - maybe you could email them in a similar way. Their email is info@claybrookewatermill.co.uk and their website is www.claybrookewatermill.co.uk - otherwise I can do it.

Thanks Christine - I've sent an email to them. It would be good to try direct contact with the mills used by John's farmers coop too, if you know who they are John?

I'll find out

Hi Wendy, hope you're well! I have been looking at this mill too: http://talgarthmill.com/Milling/milling

They supply Golden Valley Food Assembly with flour and all the milling is done by volunteers.

It sounds like an amazing community organisation, I've been meaning I contact them, just had a very busy few weeks!

I am still quite undecided, I'm swaying to spelt but also very interested in naked oats but worried there is more risk attached.

Hi Annie - I am walking in Brecon for a week in early May which is close by and could certainly visit Talgarth Mill if it helps. We should know what we are doing by then.

Just a heads up on voting..john and I will identify the choices which now seem appropriate based on the group's comments and interests. This round of voting will start later today and my suggestion is that __ the voting will end on Sunday 19th March at midnight. __ Comments to this, in the admin thread please.

_ Were it possible, I should like to encourage more contributors.. and more questions from lay people without much expertise, with their questions being answered by others in the group who know more. Certainly lots has been said, but perhaps by too few people.. _

@annielandless
This comment was posted by Annie elsewhere, but seems relevant to the current vote on crops selection. I have shortened it, but left the link..

She wrote..

_ I did some digging for info on companion cropping at ORFC 17 -- maybe this is helpful for people to contact/ info which was shared at the conference: _
_ • Another memorable session was on companion cropping, led by Jonty Brunyee of the Pasture Fed Livestock Association and the speakers included Andy Howard, an arable farmer from Kent and a Nuffield scholar, and Ian Wilkinson from Cotswold Seeds...Andy provided examples from around the world of how two or sometimes even three crops were being harvested each year from a single field by using intercropping and companion cropping. He particularly saw great opportunity for growing peas alongside wheat, oats or barley and presented the opportunity to undersow maize with other crops so as to prevent the erosion issues that are common with the crop. _

This link is a more personal take on a general link to the conference supplied earlier by Abi Aspen
@abiaspen

Source: https://thinkingcountry.com/2017/01/06/my-visit-to-the-oxford-real-farming-conference-2017/

Tristram you wrote with your vote _ but I am not against spelt if a harvestable pulse can be grown as it's companion._. The answer is this is not an option, because the spelt is so much taller - up to 4 ft - than regular wheat and so whatever is grown with is is going to be an understory and will be shaded out by the spelt.

So, to clarify, __ if you want to grow spelt vote NO, but know that the companion planting, albeit useful for other reasons, will not be a harvestable, viable crop. __

I'm still not ready to choose but will get there by Sunday. From the last decision it was clear that growing the crop with companion crop reduced the likelihood of the end result being suitable for human consumption which makes me lean more towards naked oats first then to spelt second. Both provide a secondary positive impact on the soil for the next year from either of these. @johncherry is it possible to take soil samples before and after to demonstrate the effect of the companion crop for soil building and compare this with samples taken from another field without the companion crop - or using a patch of the field without a companion crop to provide a baseline - obviously just a crude indicator. Decisions decisions...

I have been a bit busy in office hours this week and had limited success talking to anyone who may be interested in buying but was told to fire off a few emails. Awaiting replies to some of these.

I had an email response from the chairman of Doves Farm today saying that they would only buy certified organic produce and wishing us luck with the project - and I did mention that spelt was an option we were considering. If this is true it leaves me wondering where we may sell 20-50 tonnes of spelt?

I spoke to Holly from Grown in Totnes who was at the Our Field launch event in London. She said that the naked oats had incredible amounts of irritating hairs, so annoying, that their grower & his son vowed to never plant it again. They have to be polished from the seed before its rolled. They have all the equipment to do this at a small (industrial) scale. As far as I can see there is no ready bulk market for naked oats other than as animal feed, They dont really get used for human food - except for very limited specialist health/raw food outlets.

As John had previously mentioned there is no ready market for faba beans for human consumption unless they are shipped to Africa. Otherwise they are used for animal feed. I considered contacting Hodmedods who do sell faba (organic, non organic and faba flour), but havent had time and imagine they will have adequate supplies lined up - but guess it may be worth someone trying to contact them?

All this is making me think that currently the best result, if we want all the produce to go for human food, may well be to grow oats and sell them onto the commodities markets. If we were lucky I guess we may be able to find a mill that would be prepared to mill our oats separately and returning some to us, and then we could have a go at marketing some ourselves and have some of our own produce.

Thanks everyone for the spreadsheets and contacting people! I have no idea what I will choose just yet. But I just contacted Hodmedods to see if they would be interested in our Fava beans - will feedback to the group when I hear back from them...

One thing I have always wondered @johncherry - in terms of the companion crop. If we go with something like clover or an understory crop that is there to nourish the soil then obviously all of the benefits of that plant will be kept in the soil for next year. However if we go for the fava beans, we will harvest the crop and the beans are full of many of the nutrients so we will actually be taking some of the nutrients away from the field. Does that mean that companion crops (or cover crops) that are also harvested are actually less good for the soil in the long run? Or am I thinking too simplistically here?

Very interested to hear the answer to this as I've been making the same presumption.

Me too. Would love to have an answer on this before I vote!

Ok I just spoke to Hodemedods...they said in principle they would be very interested in the fava beans...but that also it's complicated....I have tried to summarise what they said below:

One issue: Generally they only buy whole fava beans from north of the Humber river because the Bruchid Beatle hasn’t reached there. However, we may not have as much of an issue with it as we are companion cropping, and also you can spray for it in June to prevent the eggs from hatching in the beans - so we could consider doing that. (http://www.pgro.org/index.php/pest-monitoring-services/bruchid-beetle)
At the small quantity we are producing they would only be able to sell them as whole beans, the processing to split them etc would be too expensive.
If we are able to produce fava beans with no Bruchid beatle problem, then Hodmedods would buy if they met their specifications for human consumption…(they said they could send these through) - at these quantities the spec would have to be particularly high as they would need to sell them for more, to cover the higher transport costs.

Also as our beans will be non-organic the price is more variable…Hodemedods are not selling on the commodities market so they are less vulnerable to the price changes but the prices for fava beans are still pegged to the commodities market and so the price we can get for non-organic will depend on the Australian harvest and how that impacts the commodities price. Apparently prices can vary from £120 - £220/tne depending on markets.
Hodmedods seemed very excited about the project and definitely saw that there could be a benefit to selling our beans on their store separately with the story along with them, and that this could potentially have an added value...but that this would be something they would have to think about.
They also mentioned that one of the big advantages of fava beans is that if we don’t meet the human consumption standards then we can always sell them as animal feed and recover some of our costs.

One other thing Hodmedods did say is that you can brew beer from Fava beans (https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2016/05/fava-beans-brewed-for-eco-friendly-beer/) …and suggested maybe @tristramstuart your company TOAST ale would consider doing a fava bean IPA brew? Apparently an Edinburgh brewery made a delicious IPA using fava beans. What do you think about that?