Farmer Direct Co-operative’s FairDeal BMPs include:

1. Land Management

   
   

   1. Maintaining Soil Cover

      1. A minimum of seven percent (7%) of the producer’s total land must be maintained with permanent cover.
         • Trees, grasslands, forages, and/or perennial crops.
      
      

   2. Soil Management

      1. Conservative tillage (CT) and no summer fallow.
         • Conservative tillage refers to any tillage practice that leaves at least thirty percent (30%) plant reside on the soil surface after the new crop has been seeded or planted.
      2. Proper crop rotation which includes legumes, cereals, and broadleaf crops.
      3. All crops are inoculated with mycorrhizae fungi, and all legume crops are inoculated with the appropriate rhizobium bacteria.
      4. No biomass burning.
      5. No chemical inputs and no pesticides.
      
      

   3. Livestock Practices

      1. Livestock are free-range and not confined.
         • Manures are spread thinly across the land; thus decomposition will be largely aerobic.
      2. Grass-fed only on rotational grazing systems.
         • Pastures have a diversity of plant species which include legumes.
         • Supplemented feed will be vegetarian only, with an optimized crude protein/energy ratio.
         • No meat by-products, medicated feed, chemical inputs, antibiotics, nor growth hormones allowed.
      3. Aerobic composting of wastes.
         • Any accumulation of manure will be aerobically composted and incorporated into the soil.
         • Applications will be matched to the nitrogen needs of crops.
         • Direct to Abattoir bypassing the feedlot.
           
           
           

2. Annual Biomass Management

   1. Plough-down crops (green manure)

      1. Crop/biomass is worked into the soil profile, before seed set, for the expressed purpose of increasing soil organic matter.
      2. Plough-down crops will replace traditional fertilizer applications; no chemical fertilizer will be used.
      3. Biological preparations are encouraged for enhanced transformation of biomass to soil organic matter.
      4. Plough-down crops will be rotating in the crop rotation at least once in every five (5) years. This calculates to twenty percent (20%) of cropped land will have plough-down hectares each year
      5. Eligible plough-down hectares must be Certified organic for a minimum of three (3) years.