The Organic Research Centre - Elm Farm (ORC)

Founded 30 years ago, the ORC is the UK’s leading independent research, development and advisory institution for organic agriculture. Within its crop research programme, it has focused on organic and low input production systems, using plant diversity in various cropping systems, such as variety mixtures, intercropping, cereal population breeding, and legume species mixtures. ORC’s research has included environmental benchmarking as well as a detailed review of priorities in organic farming research in the UK. It was a leading participant or partner in several EU projects (e.g. COST Action SUSVAR, BLIGHTMOP, FP6 SOLIBAM).

The ethos of ORC is to engage with the end user and undertake participatory research where appropriate. Therefore, the research within the institute is frequently carried out with and on producer’s holdings. One of these participatory research projects trials investigates the use of the Ecodyn cultivator; this project will provide data for the TILMAN-ORG project.

Scientist involved

• Dr. Jo Smith