Juvan Luomu – a pioneering organic dairy in Finland

As part of SOLID project, on-farm research will be conducted at Juvan Luomu partner farms.

By Heli Ahonen and Arja Nykänen

Juvan Luomu Ltd. started organic milk production and processing in 1993. There are 8 dairy farms situated in South Savo, which produce the milk for the dairy. The

partner farms of Juvan Luomu have been organic for 10 – 22 years (mean 17 years). The farm characteristics are very close to the national organic average although the farm size is considerably larger (140 hectares) than the average (70 hectares).

Stocking rate of the farms is 0.51 animal units per hectare and annual milk yield is 7 800 kg. Juvan Luomu farmers form a tight group, which shares information and ideas together, and has operational cooperation such as purchasing of organic protein supplements. They have also actively participated in several R&D projects.

Juvan Luomu is the only dairy in Finland, which concentrates solely on organic products. The annual milk production is 2.5 million litres. The products include natural and flavored organic yoghurts, which are marketed under private labels for the main super market chains in Finland.

Juvan Luomu also makes close cooperation with another dairy, Juustoportti Ltd., which produces fresh milk products and cheeses, and takes care of their marketing.

The role of Juvan Luomu in the project is to contribute to sustainability assessment of the farms, on-farm research and knowledge transfer from the project to farmers and advisors in Finland. In the sustainability assessment, the highest mean scores for Juvan Luomu farms were achieved in Farm Business Resilience, Animal Health and Welfare and Nutrient and Soil Management. Farmers considered their farm profitability to be quite good and expected it to be the same or better in the future.

In Finland, farmers actively utilize the information from advisors, farmer magazines, seminars, the Internet and even from abroad. They make economic and other plans
for their farms and have good forward vision. All the Juvan Luomu farms had health care plans which were formulated together with a veterinarian and updated it regularly. It is also notable that soils and manures are analysed on all farms and computer based programmes are widely used for nutrient management planning and are completed with the help of an advisor.

As part of SOLID project, on-farm research will be conducted at Juvan Luomu partner farms. The topics elaborated in workshops will focus on on-farm produced protein
feeds and protein self-sufficiency. Higher clover proportion in leys, including lucerne in leys (not commonly used currently), faba bean in mixtures with whole crop cereal silage as well as blue lupin for feed are the topics to study. Studies are conducted together with the research partner MTT Agrifood Research Finland.