[The people|The farm|Production|Fertilization and Pest control|Marketing|Methods|Rewards|Location|History|Land|Crops|Livestock]
Farm Profile: Sörtorp, Katrineholm, Sweden
About 75 miles west of Stockholm, beside a beautiful lake in a landscape of farmland interspersed with evergreen forests, lies perhaps the best known and most frequently visited organic farm in Sweden. As managed by Kalle and Inger Källander since 1982, Sörtorp has become an impressive example of how, with careful thought, a farm's available resources can be fashioned into a stable, productive system whose diverse components work together as an organic whole. This cardinal principle of organic farming is often voiced in the abstract, but to achieve it in practice is something else again. It requires a sustained willingness and ability to learn, to come up with ingenious uses for the farm's land and facilities, and to try different approaches to solve existing problems and adapt to changing conditions. All these are abundantly evident at Sörtorp.
Kalle and Inger were still university students when they decided in the early 1970s to enter farming, despite knowing nothing about it. Kalle, who believed strongly in protecting nature and the environment, was eager to put his studies to use in a practical way. Inger wanted to be able to keep animals and to live in nature, not just visit it. Later she, too, became very interested in environmental protection.
For a year they farmed on a very small scale with two friends while finishing their courses at the University of Uppsala (his in biology and mathematics, hers in English, French, and Spanish). In 1973 they began commercial-scale farming, renting a farm near their current one that they would run for nine years.
Totally inexperienced, they gained the necessary knowledge by a combination of reading, trial and error, and asking other farmers. "How do we harrow?" was the level of question that they found themselves plaintively asking their neighbors. But not having been trained or brought up in farming was not all bad: they credit it with leading them to try things that other people would not even have considered.
They have always farmed organically, although at first they didn't know that. Organic farming was not a recognized concept in Sweden in the early 1970s. (A related approach, Biodynamic Agriculture, had a long history in Sweden, but they were not attracted to it because it seemed too exotic.) For them, farming any other way simply was inconceivable; they could not see using poisons to raise food. Shortly afterward, they linked up with others they learned about in Sweden who were farming the same way. Since there were no books on organic farming in Swedish at the time, to learn more Inger put her language training to use in translating materials from other countries. Years later, she contributed to filling that gap with four books of her own.
For both, organic farming has become something much greater than a way to manage their particular farm. In 1985, Inger cofounded the Ecological Farmers of Sweden, of which she has been president since 1994. (In Sweden, as in several other European countries, "ecological agriculture" is identical to what in the U.S. is called "organic agriculture.") Boasting 1,700 of the roughly 3,000 certified organic farmers in Sweden, it is the only group working nationally on behalf of organic farmers, through political activity, consultations on government development programs, publications, educational programs, local organization of farmers, and coordination of the ecological agriculture movement. Inger also was recently elected to the Royal Academy of Forestry and Agriculture, where she is the only member concerned with organic farming.
Kalle, for his part, has been vice president of KRAV, the country's main organic certification organization, since helping to found it at Sörtorp in 1985. (KRAV was established under the Ecological Farmers, although it was made a separate entity to keep certification independent of an organization that represents its farmer-members' interests.) He also is a Green Party member in the Katrineholm district council, where he has been trying to get local schools to offer higher quality food (especially organics, naturally).
Before it was acquired by Kalle and Inger in 1982, Sörtorp ("Southern Smallholding") had been under intensive conventional management for many years, raising only hogs and continuous oats, and seriously infested with weeds. Now it produces a highly diversified array of vegetables, grains, forages, and meat animals, all organically certified (Table 1). It receives a continuous stream of visitors from Sweden and elsewhere, including both organic farmers and those who are thinking about converting, consumer and environmental groups, and students. Kalle and Inger do not offer Sörtorp as a model for other farmers to follow exactly. Rather, they consider it an example of how the general principles of organic farming can be applied under the circumstances of a particular farm.
The natural resources that they work with are modest. Including rented land, they operate 89 acres of cropland, 32 acres of permanent pasture, and 50 acres of forest. This puts Sörtorp in the middle of the size range for Swedish organic farms.
The soils are of medium quality. They are high in P and K but are heavy, with high clay content. Therefore, they tend to stay wet, with excessive moisture more of a problem than drought. Also, they are highly variable within a field, making it difficult to choose the best time for field operations.
The frost-free season is short—typically from early June to the end of September—and the weather is highly variable. Average annual precipitation is only about 500 mm, but because of the seasonal distribution, dryness is not usually a problem (supplemental irrigation is available for the vegetables).
Labor on Sörtorp is supplied, first, by the family. Kalle works full-time, year-round. Inger contributes to the extent she can, especially during the summer, but her position with Ecological Farmers is time-consuming, and she also teaches school in Katrineholm (foreign languages). Their three children (Markus, Karin and Linus) also pitch in, but all are still students, and the two oldest are away at their respective universities during the academic year.
They employ one half-time worker from April to October. During short peak periods additional local help is hired, typically three or four people. Interns are also common at Sörtorp, through an arrangement with post-secondary agriculture schools to give students practical experience.
Sörtorp received KRAV organic certification in 1985 after a three-year conversion. For Kalle and Inger, "organic" means not only avoiding synthetic pesticides and fertilizers in crop production, but also making heavy use of rotations, green manures, livestock manures, and natural pest controls. For livestock, it means not only avoiding hormones, conventionally produced feeds, and routine use of antibiotics, but also allowing the animals to exercise their natural behavior, for example by having access to the outdoors when the weather is suitable.
Grains and forages occupy all but 10 acres of the tillable land. They are raised in a five-year rotation: a mix of red and white clover and grass (2 years); spring-sown small grain; field peas; winter-sown small grain. Sometimes subterranean clover is used as a cover crop. The white clover is used for hay, silage, or grazing. The small grains (oats, wheat, barley, and rye) and the peas in part are sold, and in part are used as feed on the farm.
Field work is done with either a 90-hp 4WD or 45-hp tractor; grains are harvested using a small (8 foot) and very old combine. Kalle notes that yields are "somewhat" lower than would be obtained with fertilizers, but of course their fertilizer costs are lower too. It is difficult to make exact yield comparisons with nearby conventional farms, because the soils in the area are very variable.
Vegetables, although produced on only 8 acres, are important to the economy of the farm. They are grown on an old lake bed with richer soil, in a four-year rotation: two years of green manure, mainly sweet clover and grass sown with a small-grain nurse crop, followed by one year of cabbage and a year of any of several vegetables (onions, leeks, carrots, parsnips, carrots, or potatoes, depending on the particular soil). A small field near the house is intercropped with the classic combination of sweet corn, beans, and squash, and small areas also are devoted to strawberries, chokeberries (Aronia melanocarpa), rhubarb, and apples. Vegetable production is mechanized, except for hand harvesting and occasional hand weeding for thistles.
Choosing the right mix of vegetables is something that Kalle and Inger find both challenging and exciting: not only must each kind do well on a particular soil, they also must be well suited to each other biologically, and their demands for labor and machinery must be compatible with the farm's other enterprises. Market demand is another important criterion. The product mix at Sörtorp is constantly adjusted as experience accumulates and conditions change.
Kalle and Inger consider animals essential to the farm, not just because they enjoy them, but also because they make it economical to have meadow in the rotation and because they graze the uncroppable pastureland. The main livestock enterprises are beef cattle (9 cows) and sheep (13 ewes). The calves are born in the spring and are sold in the fall of the following year. They are raised entirely on farm-grown feeds, mainly hay, silage, vegetable residues, and grazing (they graze with the sheep). They get some grain during the first winter and again for one to two months before being sold. In winter they are kept in a loose housing barn converted from an out-of-date hog house.
About 20 to 25 lambs are born each spring. They are raised entirely on milk and grazing, receiving no grain. They are sold when they are 5 to 6 months old, at about 45 lb.
There also are two sows, from which about 27 market hogs are produced per year. Because Kalle and Inger do not want to raise their livestock too intensively, the sows have only three litters every two years to let the piglets suckle for 11 to 12 weeks, rather than the minimum 8 weeks required by KRAV standards. They can go outside whenever they want, and during the summer can root in the grass or forest.
Fertilization and Pest Control
The most commonly voiced concerns about organic farming are that it is difficult to supply nutrients and control crop pests adequately without conventional fertilizers and pesticides. However, these do not present overwhelming problems on Sörtorp. Soil tests, done every five years, show that available P and K are increasing. Legumes and animal manures provide enough total N. However, available N can be inadequate early in the season if the soil is cold, because mineralization of N is low.
The main pest is Canada thistle in the vegetables, which is a particular problem in heavy soils. Besides some hand weeding, thistle is partially controlled by the two years of green manure in the four-year rotation, but still can be a problem in some fields. Weeds between the rows are controlled mechanically; a brush weeder is effective in controlling weeds close to the row. Weeds in the field crops are partially controlled by the rotation with clover. Some interesting recent research offers hope of further reducing the remaining weed problems.
The only significant insect pests are the large white butterfly (Pieris brassicae) and the diamondback moth (Plutella xylostella), whose larvae attack cabbages. Kalle and Inger prefer not using anything against them, but when the problem gets serious (about one year in four) they apply Bt, a microbial pesticide permitted in organic farming. Aphids occur on the small grains, but ladybird beetles control them adequately. The small grains are susceptible by the familiar diseases, but the problems usually are not serious, and nothing is done about them.
The most persistent production problem has been the soils' tendency to remain excessively wet and become compacted. How best to work these soils was the most important thing they had to learn when in 1982, by then experienced organic farmers, they moved to Sörtorp from the rented farm, which had light, sandy soils. The effort took many years of experimentation.
Compaction is not a special problem of organic farming, and would have presented difficulties under conventional management, too. In fact, it was more serious when Kalle and Inger took Sörtorp over after many years of conventional management. Since then, the organic rotations, with their green manures and rotation meadow, have helped solve it.
The vegetables are sold through a regional food cooperative that deals exclusively in organic vegetables and potatoes, selling mostly to food chains. The grain is sold through wholesale and processing companies, with the help of people from the organic movement. The livestock are sold to a slaughterhouse that handles both organic and conventional livestock, but markets them separately. The strawberries are sold through pick-your-own or to local shops; the rhubarbs are sold through a new cooperative (about which more later).
All products are sold at premium prices. However, it is difficult to say how much the premiums are, because the organic market is "thin" and can easily be over- or undersupplied at any given time, making the premiums very volatile. Also, the organic market typically demands products that are of very high quality in all respects, so that the relevant comparison is to high quality conventional products, not the average. Consequently, Kalle could only give these estimates for the organic premiums: grains, 5 to 50%; vegetables, 0 to 100%; livestock, about 20% for cattle, somewhat higher for pigs.
Unlike some farmers, both organic and conventional, who mainly want to be producers and not concern themselves with marketing, Kalle and Inger are very attentive to consumers' demands regarding both the kinds and the quality of their products. Maintaining quality is a big job, but they welcome the challenge: "It feels right to be concerned about the quality of our products. To us it is self-evident that we should look after nature and the environment when we use the land and the animals, but it also is stimulating to hear that our vegetables are fresh and good."
Behind the Production Methods: An Organic Concept
By itself, organic management does not make Sörtorp unusual in Sweden today (although it was a lot more unusual back in 1982). Rather, what makes it stand out is the careful, thorough way that Kalle and Inger have worked out a system for their particular farm that embodies the broad principles of organic farming, not just the specific production restrictions required for certification.
The foundations of organic farming, for them, are "to make optimum use of local resources, to recycle as much as possible, to be self-reliant for resource and ecological reasons, and to improve the quality of the landscape, soil, and food." For Kalle, the key to developing a well-functioning organic system that reflects these principles is to "look at your own farm to see what can be done on it with its particular resources."
Because of the goal of self-reliance, they do not bring in any feeds or manure, although the certification guidelines allow this within limits. Instead, they make sure that livestock production is matched to the farm's ability to produce feeds, and that the manure supply is matched to the crops' needs. For example, responding to the recent development of an organic beef market, they increased beef production by growing grass-clover for two years instead of one. Not coincidentally, the change also was beneficial for soil structure and crop nutrient supply.
A general principle in managing Sörtorp is to try to use everything: "That's our specialty, to use every niche of the farm, even parts where a conventional farmer would say 'there is nothing we can do with that,'" says Kalle. To make it worthwhile to use every piece of the farm often means finding multiple uses for it, either for production or for environmental benefit. For example, they built a greenhouse in 1996, mainly to produce seedlings. But because that takes just a short portion of the year, they also use it to shelter livestock in the winter and to grow vegetables such as cucumbers and tomatoes after the seedlings. They acknowledge that they don't produce as many vegetables in the greenhouse as a conventional grower would, but they don't have to, because the vegetables just complement the other uses, providing an extra source of income. The greenhouse even serves as an attractive site for meetings.
Besides trying to find a use—or many uses—for each part of the farm, Kalle and Inger seek to integrate the separate parts into a well-functioning system. For example, the field crops that support the livestock do not need to receive all the manure produced by those livestock, thanks to the N-fixing legumes in the rotation; therefore, manure is available for the vegetables. Also, the lambs graze the vegetable residues; besides contributing to livestock production, this eliminates the possible environmental problem of nitrogen leaching from the vegetable land after harvest.
Their uncropped land is an interesting example of how "nonproductive" resources can help achieve the varied goals of the farm as a whole. The farm has several acres of hage, a landscape with widely spaced birch trees and a diverse undergrowth of grass and wild flowers. Under careful management, livestock graze the hage to keep it open and clear of brush and to optimize the desired species mix. Besides providing forage, this maintains a landscape type that traditionally has been prized but has greatly declined recently (they are subsidized by the European Union's Environmental Programme for managing it this way). Moreover, according to Inger, "if you do it right, you get a high biodiversity that supports predators of insect pests—insects, birds, and frogs." Thus the production of feeds and livestock combines beautifully with management of the adjacent forest land for their mutual benefit.
Even compared with other organic farms, which typically are more diversified than conventional farms, Sörtorp is highly diversified. Diversification requires much more management skill and effort than just concentrating on a few enterprises and learning to do them well. It also might require expanding the farm so that each enterprise is still big enough to be worthwhile. But Kalle and Inger have pursued an attractive alternative to expansion: they cooperate with other small- and moderate-size farmers to gain economies of scale. They recently formed a cooperative of 13 organic growers who started growing rhubarbs for processing into juice by a small nearby food processing plant. Individually, these growers would not have produced enough to meet the processor's needs, but together they can. Rather than competing, therefore, they are helping each other. Thus they visit each other's farms, sharing their experiences to become better rhubarb growers. Kalle and Inger consider the human aspect of the cooperative very important, not just its purely economic benefits.
Clearly, much thought and effort has gone into managing Sörtorp according to the principles of self-reliance, diversity, environmental protection, and whole-farm integration. The process is never-ending; within the past three years, a greenhouse was built, chokeberries and rhubarbs were introduced, and the field crop rotation was changed from seven to five years. Plans are in the works to expand the rhubarb cooperative to include chokeberries, strawberries, and apples.
Sörtorp obviously demands a lot of effort. What does it give in return?
In part the rewards are economic. Kalle estimates that the farm provides about one-fourth of the family's cash income, plus an attractive place to live, a large share of their food (all their red meat and most of their vegetables), and a supply of firewood.
But the standard assumption beloved of agricultural economists ("We assume the farmer is a profit maximizer",—alternatively, the vaguer "We assume the farmer is economically rational," or even merely "...is rational") hardly applies here. Could they make more money by farming conventionally? Perhaps, although it is difficult to say, because a conventional operation would raise different products. Moreover, as Kalle notes, "conventional" management could take many forms, with conventional systems differing among themselves as much as they differ from organic.
What is more important, the question is irrelevant, because farming conventionally is not an option for Kalle and Inger. All that matters, therefore, is that they are content with how much money they make from the farm. (They are not content, though, with how hard they have to work to make that much, a problem they blame on the depressed economic situation for agriculture generally.) Conventional management might pay them more, but it would not allow Inger to say "it's beautiful to work a farm like this, where you see the landscape improving." About organic farming, Kalle says "it's more fun." He appreciates that "the people are nice. You can meet a lot of people doing interesting things and have interesting discussions with them."
Could anybody do it? Skeptical of Inger's disarmingly modest answer—"Of course!"—I asked for elaboration. For her, it's a question of attitude: "You have to believe in what you are doing. You have to be brave and creative and try different things. That's how you work out a system. We laugh at our mistakes and at how crazy we are."
Clearly, Sörtorp is a special place for them: "We live close to our visions here. We have thought a lot about our goals, and in many ways have achieved them."
No doubt farmers of all kinds wish they could say that. When you meet two people who truly can, it is a very nice feeling.
Table 1. Sörtorp at a glance.
Location: East central Sweden, 75 miles west of Stockholm (59° 06'N, 16° 18'E)
Nearest city: Katrineholm (about 10 miles away, population about 30,000)
History: Bought by Kalle and Inger Källander in 1982
Previously in specialized, conventional management
All production certified organic since 1985
| Land (acres) | Owned: | Rented: |
| Cropland: | 62 | 27 |
| Permanent pasture: | 20 | 12 |
| Forest: | 50 | - |
| Crops | Size (acres) | Specification |
| Field crops: | 79 | smallgrains, grass-clover, peas |
| Vegetables: | 8 | Cabbage, onions, carrots, leeks, parsnips, potatoes, etc. |
| Others: | - | Strawberries, chokeberries, rhubarb |
| Livestock | Number |
| Cows | 9 |
| Cows | 9 calves |
| Sheep | 13 ewes |
| Sheep | 20-25 Lambs |
| Swine | 2 sows |
| Swine | about 27 markethogs per year |
| Horses | 1 Mare +1 fole |
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