Mathis leads the way into the large old farmhouse, stopping by the newly renovated heifer stall. “This is all part of the building project,” says the 32-year-old farmer and he shows me what he’s really excited about, a bright modern cheese-making facility that will open new opportunities for the farm.

A Canadian farmer, though, might be equally interested by the funding he’s getting that makes it all possible, specifically a subsidy program for young farmers from the European Union (EU), under the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP).

In most of the western world, the average age of farmers is continually rising while young people exit rural areas at an alarming rate. In Canada, only 9.9 per cent of farmers are under the age of 40. In the EU only six per cent of farmers are under the age of 35.

The world needs young farmers. They secure our food, both in quantity and quality. They are the stewards of a good part of our environment. Recognizing the seriousness of the situation, the EU is making concerted efforts to encourage and support its young farmers.

It’s an effort that Austria is pursuing vigorously, bringing its percentage of farmers under the age of 35 to almost 12 per cent, double the EU average. And it’s an effort the Mathis family is profiting from.

Cornelia and Jakob took over her father’s small alpine farm in 2014. Already in 2012 they’d purchased the neighbouring farm, which became home to the family of three children. The house was old, the only heat coming from the wood stove in the kitchen which also heats the big ceramic stove in the living room. That wasn’t a deterrent to the Mathises. “We always dreamed of our own farm,” Cornelia, pregnant with their fourth child, enthusiastically tells me. With the acquisition of the farm they became eligible for designated funds for young farmers from the EU’s Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) program.

The EU subsidy program has two pillars, the first provides a basic payment to farmers, thereby guaranteeing income stability and remunerating farmers who provide public goods. “The complementary payment for young farmers is a top-up that a young farmer receives in the first five years after starting out and comes in addition to the basic payment. It is calculated depending on the farm size,” explains Alessia Musumara, secretary general of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA).

EU member states must make up to two per cent of their national envelopes for direct payments from the EU available for the complementary payout. The total payout per farmer must not exceed 25 per cent of the basic payment. Eligible farmers must be under 40 years of age, setting up a farm and leading it for the first time, or have set up in the past 10 years. Farmers must also comply with program farming methods and procedures which are increasingly based on environmentally sustainable agriculture practices.

A different scale

The Mathises organically farm 22 alpine hectares (55 acres), milk 12 cows and 15 goats, and hold 100 laying hens. Cheese, eggs and the meat from the calves and young goats are marketed directly to the customer.

A nice hobby farm, Canadians will say. It’s definitely not a full-time farm for the Mathises either. Summers find Jakob and his family on the community pasture, where Jakob produces the rich cheese tasting of alpine herbs and grasses. In the winter he’s employed in his original trade as carpenter.

But now he is also stirring his own cheese vat. “We’ve always dreamed of processing our own milk, especially our goat milk,” Cornelia says. “And now it’s coming true!”

A 500-litre cheese vat will produce hard cheeses, a smaller 200-litre vat the soft cheeses. “Jakob will still do some off-farm work,” says Cornelia, laughing. “He couldn’t stay home all the time!”

The project was a big step for the young couple, with a considerable amount of risk. “We had to invest in the future of our farm if it was to be viable,” Jakob says. Everything was built with careful thought to possible expansion in the future.

It was also a step they couldn’t have taken without help from another component of the CAP program. Through the CAP, the EU recommends that member states utilize up to another two per cent of their total CAP subsidy funds for incentives for young farmers.

Under this second pillar, two main measures are dedicated to rural development programs at national and regional levels. The first, which helped the Mathises build the dairy, is aimed at startup ventures, providing a one-time payment of up to 70,000 euros. “We had to present a comprehensive business plan to the administration board, which chooses the most viable projects to allocate funds to,” Jakob explains, adding, “A new cheese-making facility has a better chance than, say, a new milking system.”

That they are organic producers in a challenging alpine setting and have an agricultural education background helped them meet the necessary criteria. The second measure supports young farmers with the acquisition of physical assets such as new technology or machinery designed for meeting tighter environmental regulations.

“While pillar one payments are mandatory, pillar two payments are at this point only a recommendation,” says Andreas Kugler, secretary general of Austria’s Young Farmers Association. Austria is one of the countries utilizing this program to the fullest.

Free ag schooling

The process to apply for the payments is rather complex and challenging, not only for farmers, but also for the administrators in charge of distributing the grants. An applicant must be well informed and knowledgeable to be able to access funds, often resulting in farmers missing out on what they might be entitled to. “In Austria our problem is that we don’t have enough available funds, whereas in Slovakia, for example, less than one per cent of what would be possible is paid out.”

Kugler believes that has — besides other reasons — a lot to do with Austria’s profound education system. Not only is high-quality public schooling free, but so is post-secondary education.

Add to that Austria’s strong agriculture education system. Both Jakob and Cornelia Mathis attended an agricultural high school in Hohenems, paying only for room and board.

“The school provides such a diverse agricultural education,” Cornelia explains. “You can try everything out.” A modern dairy barn, greenhouses, orchards, mechanical and woodworking shops, and a variety of small animal projects ensure a high degree of hands-on training besides the regular high school curriculum. Everyone has chores to do — be it milking cows, mucking out the barn, watering and transplanting seedlings in the greenhouse, or picking apples in the orchard.

Most students go on to apprenticeships or to studies related to agriculture. Jakob completed a carpentry apprenticeship; Cornelia has a degree as a social worker. Their dream, though, was always to farm.

“Thirty young farmers in a high school classroom — that’s highly motivating,” Kugler says. “Ideas are shared, fleshed out and brought back to the farm.” He’s sure this is a strong contributor to the higher level of young farmers in Austria.

Austria maintains a strong network of farm consultants, available at little or no cost to the farmer. “Applications for basic payments must be filled out every spring,” Jakob explains. “Agriculture advisors come to our region and are very helpful in informing us of all the extra payments available. If I need more comprehensive information, I’ll go to the city offices that provide great services for a low cost.”

It can be easy to miss some of the top-up payments available to young farmers and to those farming under more adverse circumstances such as the alpine farms, as well as to organic farmers and to those using more environmentally sustainable farming practices.

“One of our commitments is to not cut our natural hay meadows before July 15th,” Jakob says. This allows time for small animals and birds to raise their young and insects to benefit from the flowering plants and their seeds, and it enhances the tourist experience. It also means a smaller hay yield, which explains the premium payment.

The European young farmers and the EU agriculture council recognize the need to encourage and facilitate generational transfers of farm land. Are the extra payments for young farmers having an impact? Kugler believes they are.

“If we didn’t have these complementary payments, then I’m quite sure fewer young farmers would be entering the agriculture field.” The CAP provides support to governments for courses enhancing knowledge and proficiency of young farmers. “A good comprehension of basic business principles is so important to the success of a farm,” Kugler goes on. “If you aren’t able to adequately financially plan and budget, business success will be diminished. With the steps Austria has taken in the last decades our farms have become more professional businesses.”

“Without me, you don’t eat”

Jakob Mathis isn’t so sure that it’s totally these payments that are bringing youth back to the farm. “They’re an incentive, but that can’t be the driving force. The decision must come out of personal commitment and passion.” It’s a love of farming that brings Austrian young farmers back — that and a new appreciation of the meaning of land, environmental stewardship and healthy food. “The young farmers in our valley are here because they are passionate about farming.”

Kugler would like to see farm income becoming less dependent on public funds. “The price for food should reflect its real value,” he insists “We need to educate non-farmers as to why so much of their tax money goes into agriculture and what happens to it. Farmers actually receive only a part of those funds.” Agriculture needs to work on promoting its image: “I am a farmer; I produce high-quality food. Without me, you don’t eat.”

“It is a big problem, that farmers should market themselves better,” Jakob admits. “But especially direct-marketing, as we do, takes time. Today it’s snowing, so we’ve got time. In the summer, we’re haying and I’m making cheese on the alp. Tourists come by, they want to talk. It’s important, though, for our image that I stop and make time for them, explaining what we are doing and why.”

“We underestimate the time our customers take,” Cornelia says of agriculture generally. “When I deliver our meat and eggs, I have to stop for the small talk about farm and kids.”

The Mathis farmhouse lies directly along a popular hiking path. A fridge is stocked with alp cheese, eggs and meat from their animals. The cashbox sits above the fridge. The honour system applies here.

“It’s not our goal to get rich in 10 years,” says Jakob, smiling at Cornelia. They believe in their future. They’re living the life they dreamed of, and there’s so much to look forward to.

The post Young and farming in Austria appeared first on Country Guide.

Of course, Klänhammer wasn’t the only one looking for opportunity.

Farmers from the West sensed opportunity too, some of them wanting to swoop in and go big, while others like Frank Hartmann eyed a return to the family’s land.

“There was this atmosphere of excitement and optimism,” Hartmann, 53, recalls. He’d just finished agriculture college and was preparing to come back to where the family had migrated near Hannover, in the former West Germany. (His grandparents and parents had fled there in l956 when the Russian occupation became more repressive.)

In East Germany, the Hartmann’s home farm at Wustrow along the North Sea had been annexed into a state farm, as had happened to almost all farms in the DDR.

After the fall of communism, the lands that had been aggregated into these state farms were distributed back to the original owners.

When the news came, a comment from his mother at the breakfast table sent Hartmann on his way to Wustrow, wondering if he could rent enough land in addition to the family’s 15 hectares to make a viable venture.

Today he farms 290 hectares, the only crop farmer on the otherwise marshy peninsula. Son Kim, 21, just joined him a year ago.

The taste of freedom

The fall of communism was a heady time, remembers Bernd Klänhammer of Penkun, 53. “Everyone talked about the freedom to travel,” he recalls. “I just saw the freedom to finally farm as I wished.”

He too was young, recently married, with both he and his wife Berith just out of university with agriculture degrees. “We’ve got to get on this,” he told his dad.

The Klänhammers have farmed in Penkun, a rural village near the Polish border, since the early 1800s. When the Second World War began, Bernd’s father owned 60 hectares, a large farm for that time. With the Russian occupation, every farm over 100 hectares was expropriated. Farms over 50 hectares were taxed so heavily that it frustrated any efforts to succeed. Bernd’s father split his land between his siblings and himself to break it into smaller parcels.

Later, most farmland and inventory were annexed into state farms but Penkun was fortunate to have a lenient overseer. Farmers there were given more freedom to manage the state farm as they saw fit.

Today Bernd and Berith farm 500 hectares and manage a modern hog barn with 900 pigs. Son Jonas, 19, is studying agriculture at the same university that his father and grandfather attended, and he is the planned successor.

After the fall

The fall of communism was both exciting and challenging. Most former owners who had their farmland returned actually had little interest or ability to farm, so they rented or sold to farmers like Klänhammer or Hartmann. “The liquidation of the state farms required new structures for farms and agriculture services,” Hartmann explains. The “new” farmers had to start from scratch. They had land but little inventory. Assets on the state farms were mostly outdated.

“A huge problem was the lack of capital of the new farmers of the DDR times,” Hartmann says.

Western farmers and companies saw the opportunity in the new lands and came east. They had the advantage of capital and new technology. Not all of them stayed. “Many of my agriculture college colleagues who went to farm in the East threw in the towel after a few years,” Hartmann says.

Often, the newcomers were also ostracized by their new communities, although Hartmann had the advantage of his family name and background.

Almost 30 years later, the farmers who stuck with it have caught up to the West, and the lessons learned from those early years are being applied to new opportunities and challenges.

From the highest point of their land, which is only 15 metres above sea level, the Hartmanns look over the glistening North Sea just to the west and the brackish water of the Saaler Bodden on the east. The distance between the two bodies is hardly five kilometres, with Wustrow and its reed-covered fisher houses between.

For farmers, this may sound like a challenge, but the scenery and the mild climate make this one of the most popular tourist destinations of Germany, swelling Wustrow from its winter population of 600 up to 6,000 in peak season.

Almost every acre of cropland you can see there is cultivated by “Bauer Hartmann,” as the sign on his truck reads. The large part of the peninsula is marshy pasture and hayland for cattle. Hartmann owns 30 of his 290 hectares. He also rents a multitude of small plots from 25 former farmers. These go back to the time of the seafarers, when sailors were required to own two hectares so their families were cared for if they failed at sea.

“It’s pretty complicated,” Hartmann admits of his rental contracts. He was able to consolidate the small holdings into larger tracts for easier farming, planting a rotation of canola, wheat, barley and peas. Minimum or no tillage helps to improve the structure of the sandy soils.

There’s no more cropland available around the farm. “We have to do more with what we have,” son Kim declares. Currently, they are transitioning from conventional to organic farming. It’s not totally due to a value system. “My surroundings demand it,” Hartmann says. Tourists run when they see his sprayer.

Some of those tourists are his own tourists too. He rents out apartments and invites tourists to riding holidays on a working farm, with 14 horses to hire, plus riding lessons.

The tack room will have to relocate, though, to make room for an on-farm store. Eggs from their chickens and the meat from their beef herd of 30 cows will be sold here. The herd is growing. Vegetables will replace some of the current crops, and the Hartmanns are considering a cleaning and processing plant.

“The youth taking over the farms today are highly motivated,” Hartmann observes.

Meanwhile, down the road

In Penkun there’s plenty of land around the Klänhammer farm. The farming village is just 30 kilometres from the Polish harbour of Stettin. It boasts its own castle, and is surrounded by vast fields reminiscent of Western Canada. A 2,000-hectare farm is not unusual here.

Communist land reform was devastating to the small farmers, but the winners are those who were in the position to buy and rent the land once it became free. “We went to our relatives and friends and asked if they would rent us their land,” Klänhammer says.

The Klänhammers were able to start farming in l991 with 100 hectares. That first year Bernd, his brother and his father farmed together. The next year they separated the business. “That was the best decision we made,” Bernd says.

But that doesn’t mean it was easy. “We didn’t even have money for one day’s diesel for the tractor,” Klänhammer recalls. A loan from an aunt got them started, plus a government grant covering the costs of inputs for the first year (repayable if the business was exited within the next 12 years).

When Country Guide visited, a John Deere 8230 was hooked up to an eight bottom reversible plow. A Claas Lexion 750 combine stood in the shed, and the grain storage was filled with wheat on aeration.

The family has come a long way from that beginning. Like any Canadian grain farmer, Bernd works the market, pre-pricing a portion of his crop. Canola goes by truck to port, mostly to Rostock but sometimes to Stettin; sugar beets to the nearby factory in Amklum. Much of the cereals and peas are used on farm as hog feed.

The risk of democracy

Now, the evolving agriculture environment in Germany is a source of uncertainty about the future. “I’m convinced our farm will survive and grow,” Klänhammer says. “We’ve made it through a lot of upheaval.

He’s cautious, though, about growing much bigger.

“I see a certain danger whenever fewer people own more land,” Klänhammer says. It means the larger part of the population has no understanding of agriculture, which adds to the risk. “Yet I am still optimistic.”

Meanwhile, the regulation of agriculture keeps growing. “All these rules that restrict farmers will increase,” Kim Hartmann believes. “The paperwork will continue to grow. That’s what really worries me.”

There’s another concern too. EU crop farmers receive 270 euros per hectare in subsidy payments. That’s half the Hartmann farm income.

“I don’t know where this is taking us,” Kim wonders.

But unfettered capitalism is having an impact on them too. After the fall of communism, land was cheap to rent and purchase. Recently laws were changed so non-agricultural companies, such as the power companies, can invest in farmland. That has driven prices to where neither of these farmers see themselves purchasing land in the near future.

What worries both families too is the weakening legal certainty for farmers. “You can have the authorization to build a hog barn, get the credit and start building,” Berith Klänhammer says. “Then some protesters come along and the court will say your authorization wasn’t valid or it is rescinded. A legal authorization seems to have no validity.”

Hearing her, Bernd adds, “It all reminds us of DDR times. We have a lot of freedom, yes, but… all these games.

In nearby Tantow

Tom Landsmann apologizes for his tousled look. “I’ve just come in from a night of hunting,” he explains. “Come on in, look around. I don’t have anything to hide!” If the big man looks more like a Canadian than a German, there’s a reason: 20 years spent ranching near Rocky Mountain House, Alta., made him feel most at home in a cowboy hat and boots.

That mix of Canadian and West German has served him well while growing his 2,000-hectare grain farm in Tantow, near Penkun.

Unlike neighbouring eastern farmers, Landsmann has no background of repression. From the beginning he carried the maximum debt the bank would give him. He purchases every available piece of land. His aggressiveness doesn’t endear him to his new community. “They’re jealous because I own all this land,” Landsmann believes. He doesn’t care. He does care about his 84-year-old father, who is the only reason he came back to Germany. In l996 Landsmann’s parents had immigrated to Alberta from northern Germany with their two teenage children, to a section of ranch land. All Landsmann ever wanted to do was farm. The ranch grew to two sections and a 500-head pig barn was added. Landsmann’s mother passed away in 1996. His father was lost and homesick for Germany. Landsmann saw the opportunities in eastern Germany and took his father back.

Landsmann is homesick for Canada, but as long as his father is alive he will continue to drive the farm in Tantow forward. Despite the drought last summer and autumn, his fall-seeded canola beside the farm buildings was thriving, contrary to many of his neighbours. “I plow, then immediately pack and seed to conserve moisture.” Others wait for a couple of days before seeding, Landsmann explains. “I always do the opposite of everyone else.” When Landsmann first came to Tantow he practised no tillage. In recent years he’s returned to plowing, mostly because of cost. Chemicals are expensive and weed resistance a problem.

A recent newspaper article depicting the harvest season on the Landsmann Farms could have come out of Western Canada. The combines never stop except for a hot supper, which is brought to the field. “It’s important that everyone takes a break,” Landsmann has learned. It’s good for morale too.

Landsmann might not care so much about his community but he does about his employees. His plows are all reversible, but he keeps a one-way plow just for his oldest employee. “He never operated any other plow and won’t change now,” Landsmann smiles. He stops to chat briefly with a short, swarthy man in black cut-off shorts. “That guy will do anything for my father,” he says fondly. At the end of the working day he and his father sit down with his crew for a beer. “That’s when I find out what’s happening on the farm.”

There’s another land deal in the offing. Landsmann’s thinking of selling off a current land piece to purchase it. What he won’t sell is the forest with his hunting grounds. “Someone would have to dig very deep into their pockets to get that!”

The post The German question appeared first on Country Guide.

But amid the similarities, there is this great difference. One farms to survive, the other to reach the top.

Kidingvey road in Aabenraa leads through green rolling hills and past thriving canola fields and white-trimmed brick farm houses.

Then, at Nr. 42, Piggy, a fat concrete sculpture of a hog, greets visitors to the neat gravel lane that leads past shady trees and a meticulous lawn.

The home and farm of Mogens and Bente Dall is a place where TV crews and journalists are welcome. Always heavily involved in agriculture boards and politics, Mogens is campaigning for a seat in the upcoming national elections in 2019.

He runs a 10,000-feeder-pig operation and crops 256 hectares of land 30 kms northeast of the Danish border with Germany. It’s a large farm for Denmark, where the average farm is 70 ha. But that’s all changing, Mogens says.

“The general direction is that if you don’t operate 800 to 1,000 hectares you will be small fry. That will take a few years yet, but it’s coming to Denmark too.”

“Kloge Hans” is what Bente calls him, as in “Clever Hans,” after a Danish fairy tale. Dall spent his first two years in an orphanage before being adopted by a farm couple for whom he became their dream child. It’s a story Dall loves to tell in all the details; his father calls it a real fairy tale.

Maybe it’s that fairy tale background which helped form him into a beaming healthy ego that thrives on risk.

The farm Mogens and Bente took over from his father in l990 was small — 45 hectares and a hog barn for 1,300 feeder pigs.

“You’ll soon be working out and this farm will be your hobby,” Mogens was told. To which he retorted, “I’d give my right arm for this farm. You can be sure I’ll work hard and I’m not the most stupid. Let’s give this a chance.”

As an only child he was able to acquire the farm for a family price, later using it as leverage to invest in more land as it became available (he would go on to purchase five smaller and one larger farm around him) and in buildings and technology for the hog business. The strategy worked.

“We risked a lot, financially, several times. Looking back we can conclude that with luck and a bit of hard work it paid off. We wouldn’t know that though until after the decisions were made. We once invested one and a half million Canadian dollars in three new hog barns. We had hardly stocked them with the first wieners when pig prices rose because of BSE elsewhere.” (Denmark stayed BSE free.)

In 2001 Dall received a decisive call from a landlord who wished to retire. The roots of that large holding of 160 hectares reach back to 1725 to a baron who worked the land using serfs. “I think it’s a number too big for you,” the landlord said. “But if you want to try, we’re open to discussions.”

Dall did want to try. To not do so would jeopardize his hog business, as he needed the land base for his manure. Land prices had risen considerably since his first purchase of 64,000 Danish krone per hectare (C$12,950) to now 140,000 krone per hectare (C$28,315). Looking back, though, it was still a good price. Today it would sell for 180-200,000 kroner (C$36,405 to 40,450). “We’ll be able to cash in nicely one day.” Plus, Dall’s land now provides all his required hog feed except for soybeans.

His fall-seeded crops look healthy, better than some others around him. Dall does most of the field work including harvest with the help of a young employee. The seeding is hired out. He doesn’t consider himself above doing the rock picking himself with a fork, his 75-year-old employee on the tractor.

Mornings find him in the hog barns from six to nine. Then it’s off to the office. Dall is chairman of LandboSyd, an agriculture business consulting firm he helped found 10 years ago. Today, LandboSyd has 140 employees and serves 2,000 clients. “You have to make a date on the calendar for family time or work will consume you,” Bente warns.

Though Dall has no successor in sight, he’s convinced of the importance of continued investment in the farm. “I’m too old now to build a new barn. My strategy, though, has always been to build a viable farm entity to a size which provides a successor or purchaser with good opportunities.”

Dall believes the days of the small family farm are disappearing, unless it produces organically.

“What is too small is too small.” A decade ago the government changed land ownership laws to allow non-farmers to purchase agriculture land, driving prices up. Land is seen as a secure investment, providing two to three percent interest. Dall doesn’t see this as all bad, saying that for farmers who want to stay in the business, not much may change in their daily life. The farmer may become more of a manager or operator, even maintaining a share in the farm. Small farmers can sell for a better price, providing them a better retirement.

“Money is very tolerant,” Dall says. “The investor has a major interest in putting in the money if investments are needed.”

On the other side

On the other side of the country, not far from the North Sea, is the Petersen farm. Popp, as he is called to distinguish him from the many other Petersens in the area, has 600 breeding sows and owns 85 hectares. The light sandy land is rented out. “It doesn’t make financial sense to work the land myself,” he says, adding, “Land ownership is not highly valued here.” Instead, he concentrates on doing an excellent job with the sows and piglets.

Petersen’s father was only 47 years old when he passed away. A musician, his father eventually rented out the third-generation farm. His mother ran a store in the village. The same year his father passed away, the renter declared bankruptcy. For the next four years Petersen took over the cropping of the land while finishing agriculture school. In l987 he and his wife came back to the farm.

What Petersen values most in farming is the freedom to be an entrepreneur, and to plan his days and business to suit him. “We’ve always striven for flexibility,” says Petersen. “I don’t have a five-year plan.”

“The goal of some farmers, for instance, is to have 1,000 head of cattle. That’s not important to me.”

However, the farm must be able to adapt easily to new circumstances, whether it be politics, agriculture, or family. He and his wife began with 180 sows and cropped the land. For a time they farmed organically, then gave it up and turned their full attention to the breeder operation. For now that’s working well.

“We aim to avoid high debt,” Petersen says. “That entails the risk that things might not continue, not with the existing structure, but it provides flexibility.” When farmers invest big, he believes, they lose that flexibility, and he has seen many farmers go bankrupt, especially after the financial crisis in 2008.

And the trend continues.

Just recently a large corporate farm claimed bankruptcy. “It was a large operation; they did everything right,” claims Petersen. They’d invested heavily and the situation went against them. Petersen believes in the advice a financial speaker gave at a farm conference some years ago. “It’s not about being at the top and making the most money. It’s about farming in such a way, you can survive the lows.”

It’s not just agriculture or politics that can jeopardize the farm. Personal catastrophes such as divorce or illness can make the farm very vulnerable. Although Petersen doesn’t invest heavily in land and buildings, he does aim for the top in breeding and growth performance. “Our operation is very intensive, with two employees. Every day brings something new, every day we have to improve. This means investing in technology to be more efficient and better.”

How does a small country like Denmark maintain such a thriving agriculture business? “We have to be better than the others, work more efficiently, streamline operations” is Petersen’s conclusion.

Denmark is a high-cost social state within the European Union. (Bente Dall points out that their 23-year-old son goes to university free of charge, even receiving a monthly cheque for living expenses.) Wages, too, are higher. Environmental regulations are tight.

“If challenges and demands are tougher, we work harder,” Petersen says. That’s one reason, he insists, that Denmark’s pork breeding sector is so successful. Another is the superior veterinary situation. Being surrounded by ocean, with only a 70-km border to Germany, helps to keep disease to a minimum. “When BSE broke out in the U.K. and Holland, we were clean and could keep our markets. We’ve always been able to export to China and the U.S.A.”

The third reason, Petersen believes, is the spirit of co-operation among the Danish farmers. Almost all the large agriculture service and production companies are producer owned.

“There are so many unknowns in farming,” he concludes. “What we do is akin to a chess game. 30 years ago, growing organically was a new concept; today it is becoming mainstream. The whole discussion about the consumption of meat and climate change isn’t going away. Danish agriculture relies heavily on exports of meat and live breeding stock. Turnarounds in that sector could hit us hard.”

The most important place on the Petersen farm is the kitchen table. Here problems and joys are discussed and all the major decisions made. His wife isn’t otherwise involved in the farm.

“Being married to a farmer is different,” Petersen believes. “You are always a part of the whole.”

Popp is a town councillor in nearby Tonder. He’s chairman of an agricultural co-operative and on the board of a private German school, among other things. Everything he is otherwise involved in depends on things going well at home. “Politics can change tomorrow. Our farm is our pillar.”

Early mornings find him, like Dall, in the barn. He still castrates all the piglets himself and is present at weaning. The farm has two employees, one of them a woman whose job is to take care of the piglets. These are raised to 30 kilos weight.

Every two weeks, 650 to 700 weaner pigs are sold to a feeder barn about an hour away. All Petersen’s hog feed is purchased. He has contracts with the surrounding farms for the manure.

Petersen leads to his backyard, makes a sweeping gesture over the wide blue sky, the dark soil of the worked grain field, the meadow lined by spruce trees. “This is what I look forward to coming home to every time I’ve been away, all this space.”

The farm is above all his family home. Popp’s daughters have all pursued careers outside of the farm. That has an advantage. “When the younger generation takes over, the older generation should move out,” he says. “We ourselves have made our investments in such a way so that we can scroll down our production and continue to live here.”

Petersen’s goal is to live an active involved life. Farmers are entrepreneurs, he says, always coming up with new ideas. After a poor crop year they get out and seed again. His neighbour farmed organically until he died at 87, and always had a project going on the side. “He’s my role model,” Petersen says.

Most important to Petersen is that his family is healthy and happy. Their oldest daughter and her family just moved down the road. “We didn’t influence that decision but are super happy to have them so close.”

For Dall too, in the end it’s about family. “Having children changes your focus,” he says.

“I always say that if our children are healthy and happy, if Bente and I have a good relationship, and the automatic feeding system is working, then my world is in order!”

Danish agriculture at a glance

• Total hectares: 4.3 million
• Total under cultivation: 60 per cent compared to Canada’s 4.3 per cent
• Population: 7 million, agriculture production feeds three times that population
• Average farm size: 70 hectares, 20 per cent are more than 100 hectares
• Dominating crops: cereals, 75 per cent of which are for animal feed
• Main exports: meat, fur, and dairy products
• Contribution to GDP: 25 per cent as compared to Canada at 0.38 per cent
• Co-operative turnover contributes close to 10 per cent of GDP
• Annual exports from the food and agriculture industry: excess of 30.7 billion dollars
• Pork statistics from 2017:
  – Total pigs: 31,662 million
  – Total slaughtered: 16,931 million
  – Live pigs exported: 14,172 million

The post The two sides of Denmark appeared first on Country Guide.

Fabulously fertile, furiously high priced and fragile, this new land is a dream and a challenge to farm.

Leo de Jonge’s parents were among the first pioneers in the polder municipality of Zeewolde. In l980 there was hardly a road here, no power, nothing but flat farmland covered with seashells. Like so many others, the de Jonge family put up a small camper and, hauling their water from 10 kilometres away, they began building their dream farm.

It was a unique opportunity in that period for a young family to begin with a clear drawing board, so to speak, in a new area populated by other eager young families. They were all handpicked by the government — families had to be industrious and healthy. It is said the inspectors even checked the kitchen cupboards to make sure they were clean.

The new communities were to be a societal mix from different provinces and churches. As the last polder to be settled, the planning and layout of towns and farms in South Flevoland was more advanced than that of previous polders. Farms were larger, based on blocks of 60 hectares, taking into account the size of current machinery.

The land belonged to the government and was leased to the farmers. It was a challenging, but an exciting time.

Four decades later the polder is a rich landscape of modern towns, tree-lined highways, forests and immaculate mature farmyards. The de Jonge farm grew from the original lease of 60 hectares to a solid 170 owned and 21 rented hectares — a large operation in a country where the average farm is 42 hectares.

De Jonge purchased the original lease in l997. In 2004 he and his wife Willemien bought a 57-hectare farm 20 kilometres away, a financial risk that took them many years to recover from. “Everyone thought we were crazy,” Willemien says. “We said, if we can’t make payments, we will sell a part of the farm and maybe rent it back. It doesn’t matter; we can do other things too.”

The risk paid off and two years ago they were able to purchase the neighbour’s farm of 53 hectares which came with a dairy operation of 70 cows. “We didn’t have the ambition to dairy farm but it was part of the parcel,” Leo says. “It’s not an ideal situation but it’s the best way to make the buildings profitable.” Dairy farming in Europe isn’t as lucrative as it once was. At least he didn’t have to pay for quota.

It is still a challenging and exciting time. The biggest challenge, Leo says, is balancing the need for high-yielding, high-income crops on high-priced farmland with sustainability of the soil and environment — a challenge many Canadian farmers can identify with.

Flevoland has some of the most expensive land in the Netherlands with prices of up to 120,000 euros per hectare (approaching C$75,000 per acre).

Fortunately, if land is privately owned, there is no capital gain charged if it is sold, Leo says. “Land prices double every 10 years.”

Still, the pressure to grow high-value crops is intense, with potatoes and onions generating from 7,000 to 8,000 euros per hectare.

It explains why the de Jonge farm concentrates on those two crops, accounting for two-thirds of their total hectares. More than 30 per cent of Dutch cropland is in potatoes — the Netherlands is the largest exporter of seed potatoes and onions in the world.

Smaller than the province of Nova Scotia, this tiny country is, incredibly, the second-largest exporter of agriculture products in the world, next to the U.S. — due to high-value products such as seeds, bulbs and fresh flowers, and modern processing.

In 2018 the de Jonges cropped 40 hectares each of potatoes, onions and sugar beets, 12 hectares of wheat, 23 hectares of grass and four hectares of silage corn. They also rented 27 hectares out for tulips and an apple tree nursery. Leo follows a careful rotation to maintain soil health. Potatoes and sugar beets are in a four-year rotation, onions and tulips eight years, wheat every six years. He works closely with six other farmers to exchange land. “It’s a bit complicated,” Leo says. “We have to be flexible with our rotations.” Sometimes the dairy farmers want some of their land back for growing corn, other years corn is so cheap they rent the land out. “We’ve always succeeded in working it out though!”

The farmers also share labour and equipment, working together on a trust basis; there are no written contracts. Sharing knowledge and resources is not traditionally done in Dutch farming circles. “Connecting with other colleagues is not easy,” says another Flevoland farmer, Gerjan Snippe. “Each farmer does his own thing.” There is a shift among the younger more business-minded farmers who are learning that bundling synergies not only saves them money but brings new ideas and energy to the farm.

Behind the cow barn a plowed field lies bare under the hot sun. Usually Leo would seed a cover crop of ryegrass after the tulip bulb harvest, but the severe drought this last summer made that unfeasible. Instead he’s spread manure, which comes from the dairy cows and the duck farm of one of the other six farmers.

“I think the most important to maintain soil health is to use good quality manure,” Leo maintains. “We also grow a maximum of cover crops which are plowed down.” In a normal year he would seed 30 to 40 per cent of harvested acres into a cover crop.

“Organic matter levels on this farm haven’t changed in the last 37 years,” Leo says proudly. On the home farm the soils have 4.5 per cent organic matter. On a second farm 20 kilometres away it is 2.5 per cent. The seashell pieces still permeate the soil. “We don’t forget that we began on very virgin soils in the early ’80s. The structural problems are growing as the land is getting older. We have to find the optimum between economics and sustainability.”

Compaction of soil during the potato and sugar beet harvest is a going concern. Often the weather is wet and the heavy equipment drives deep ruts. Whenever possible, Leo rips the soil after harvest to aerate it. Sometimes he deep tills to mix sand from the deeper layers with the heavier clay at the surface.

While most of northern Europe is dry, trees and crops in Flevoland are a healthy green. It’s hard to believe there’s a drought here too. The water table is only 1.2 metres under the surface and irrigation systems are running 24 hours a day. The tight network of canals ensures a ready supply of water, giving farmers an advantage over many other parts of the country. The potato price is based on the EU5, as Leo calls it — Belgium, Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands. All those countries are dry this year. In mid-July, after four weeks of irrigating at a cost of 25,000 euros per week, Leo wasn’t praying for rain anymore. “We hope the drought will last a few weeks so that prices will rise.” And it did, until August 10. Leo is thankful for several good rains after that. “We had enough rain for harvesting the seed potatoes,” he says. “The soil was like concrete.”

The Netherlands have committed to reducing CO2 emissions by 49 per cent by 2030. Flevoland’s contribution is the multitude of windmills. The constant wind coming off the ocean means the blades never stop turning. The de Jonge farm owns two windmills, one of which is rented out to a co-operative, and they produce 80,000 kilowatt hours of solar power from panels on farm building roofs per year.

The office is prominently set in the centre of the main floor of the farmhouse. Willemien and Leo spend a good amount of time here, separately and together, filling out the many forms required by the government or for their farm advisors. Major decisions such as machinery and land acquisitions are hashed out together. “Leo mostly makes the final decision though,” Willemien says. To generate higher returns on their crops the couple have begun to hedge a part of their crop. It’s something new to them which they want to learn more about. Similar to most Canadian grain farmers, they pre-sell a portion of their crops before harvest

The de Jonges are an independent agent between onion growers and packers, receiving a share of the gain from the packers. Onions are sold into the African, American and European markets. Willemien personally accompanies the deliveries of potatoes and onions to the factory to be able to iron out any difficulties with management there.

As the dairy is giving them more problems than the gain they had hoped to capture, they are now planning to phase out of it beginning in 2019.

A Global G.A.P. certificate — Good Agricultural Practices — shows the farm’s commitment to sustainable agriculture. The organization sets private sector incentives for producers worldwide to adopt safe and sustainable food production practices. The de Jonges are also members of the Skylark Foundation, a collaboration between growers and the agriculture industry for a more sustainable agriculture industry, seeking to produce better food with lower inputs while maintaining high yields. The sharing of knowledge within these groups is invaluable.

Every morning, 9 a.m. is Kofie time on the de Jonge farm, out on the veranda, whenever possible, or at the long oak kitchen table. Willemien serves a pot of that rich dark coffee so loved by the Dutch, along with the traditional wafers. It’s a time for family and workers to relax for a moment and discuss the day. The farm records about 3,000 employee hours a year with all employees except the dairy man being seasonal. During school vacations the de Jonge children also help as needed.

The 19-year-old twins, Ruben and Pieter, both study at the same agriculture college as their father once did, 17-year-old Ann is beginning economic studies and 14-year-old Jan Luc is still in school. The twins especially are showing an interest in what goes on in the farm and are beginning to add their thoughts to farm decisions. That leads to some tension at times. Mom Willemien admits to sometimes feeling her position challenged. Transitions are not easy! It took a session with a farm consultant to help everyone better understand each other’s needs.

What does the future hold? Right now they are in a period of consolidating and paying off debt after the last land acquisition. “We try to make a major step every 10 years,” Leo says. “After another five to 10 years we hope to be in a financial position for the next step.” What that step is depends on the direction the children will take, but also on the interests of himself and Willemien. Leo would like to buy more land, as it is the foundation for everything. “Maybe it is better to invest in adding more value to the crops, though,” he thinks. That could provide the couple with more cash should successors take over the farm.

Will one of the children come back to the farm? “We don’t know yet,” says Willemien. “There is a lot more to do in the world than only farming. But they are interested, so we shall see what the future brings.”

“We have the most expensive land but we have the best opportunities,” Willemien concludes. Leo adds, “We’re very fortunate to be here!”

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Ego by itself is neither good nor bad. It’s simply a Latin word that means “I.”

“Everyone has an ego,” says Len Davies, principal of Davies Legacy Planning Group which has clients throughout Ontario and the Maritimes and over 40 years of advisory experience with farmers.

While ego issues are usually associated with an inflated sense of self, Davies adds that low ego brings its own issues, such as the inability to make decisions.

“A good strong ego with good management is actually the very best,” says Davies. “You don’t want to be arrogant, but if you can get the two together, you’ll be very successful.”

Davies likes to compare farmers to a hockey or ball team. On paper, a team can have the best and most expensive players. They put all their faith in the fact that they’re a great team.

Another team, meanwhile, may know it doesn’t have all the all-star players, so it works even harder at strategizing. It practises harder, and when the big day comes, it beats the supposedly best team.

“Ego is just like that,” Davies says. “You can think you’re wealthy, you’re from a great family, but if you don’t do your homework and things go bad, you’re going to suffer… I have one successful farmer with a huge ego. He plans all the time and he’s got an open mind. Another farmer with a huge ego thinks everything is fine but he’s just going backward. For one farmer the ego works, for the other it doesn’t.”

The wrong kind of ego, Davies believes, has the attitude that “The neighbour isn’t doing it right, my son isn’t doing it right, no one is doing it right but me.”

It could help to look at the ego as a risk just like any other in the business. Stuart Person is national director of MNP’s Primary Producer Agriculture Niche. While the lack of confidence that comes with a poor ego is definitely problematic, it’s the overinflated ego that has the potential for the most damage, especially long-term, Person believes.

Such an ego can cause cash-flow problems, missed opportunities, poor debt management and safety issues, and it can slow or stop farm growth.

Both Davies and Person believe the most detrimental effect of an oversized ego is seen within family relationships, where such an ego can frustrate succession negotiations and cause dissension among family members, and also be a cause for breakdown both for the farmer’s and for the successors’ marriages.

Ultimately, it can cause the loss or sale of the farm.

The guilty signals

So what are the indicators of an overactive ego? “There’s always a big resistance to change,” Person says. Many farmers have a tendency to think, “We’ve always done things this way, and it’s always worked for us.” Or they’ve tried something new in the past that failed.

“You can’t base your decision on one event that went wrong,” Person says.

Today’s farming environment is fast-paced, with new technologies, farming practices and policies emerging daily. “You have to be willing to change and adapt. You can’t get stuck in old ways.”

Especially on generational family farms, he sees a lot of pride and legacy built into the farm, but he also sees situations where it can lead the older generation to be unwilling to change. This is turn creates frustration in the oncoming generation.

“One sign is if you’re not always trying to improve your business,” Davies says. “If you go to farm meetings and someone puts something out there, always be looking for the good in it.”

Some farmers listen to a speaker and then go home and say how stupid the speaker was, scoffing at their ideas. A farmer with a right-sized ego takes a more balanced look.

That doesn’t mean farmers shouldn’t be critical listeners, but a healthy ego is open to new ideas while assessing their usefulness for their farm. It looks at the pros and cons of something new, and then make a decision.

“If you don’t even bother to weigh the pros and cons you have a big ego,” Davies insists. “You should always be picking people’s brains.”

Another sign is making fun of professionals and advisers in the agriculture industry. Person says many farmers call them “pencil pushers,” and say they’re out of touch compared to the guys in the coffee shop. They don’t want an outsider telling them how to farm. “A lot of these guys that are running with the old mentality are going broke or falling out of the picture,” Person cautions. There’s a greater level of sophistication required to operate today’s farms compared to the past. “We’re trying to give farmers tools,” he says.

Hanging on to control of the farm also highlights an ego problem. Davies strongly cautions against picking on and micromanaging children and employees, and he warns farmers of the cost of not listening to the next generation.

“If you’re always consciously nickelling-and-diming everything they do, you’ve got a big ego,” Davies adds. “You’ve forgotten that you made some big mistakes too.”

An oversized ego has a general unwillingness to listen to and openly communicate with others. “Many farm families tend to be poor communicators,” Person says. They aren’t good at dealing with issues or discussing the future with their family.

Historically, there was a presumption in many farm families that Dad is the boss. He knew what was going on and made all the decisions. He didn’t ask questions of his family or advisers.

Often, though, that kind of independence comes out of a sense of fear. Listening to and involving family members would mean the farmer, most often the father, couldn’t just do as he wanted. Others could turn out to be also capable.

Both Person and Davies see this fear in many farmers they have worked with. Davies experiences farmers sabotaging the succession planning process. Whenever the successor comes close to fulfilling the father’s stipulations, the father changes the parameters again.

Youthful arrogance

Ego is not just a problem of the older generation, Davies says. There are children who don’t respect or appreciate their parents for their role in providing the foundation to the family farm. The 25-year-olds were young teenagers when crop prices began to improve, Davies says. They don’t remember the really hard times in the 1970s and 1980s with the inflated interest rates.

Often they don’t understand the reluctance of their parents in purchasing new land or expensive equipment. “All they see is the success and they don’t understand what’s wrong with Mom and Dad,” Davies cautions. “They might not be getting 40 litres of milk per cow but they bought all that land and paid for it and came all this way.”

Working on solutions

The risks are identified and the indicators assessed. What are the strategies and tools to manage that ego?

“Communication is No. 1,” Person is sure. “Talk to your spouse and your kids. Be open and honest about where you are going.” Good communication means listening more than speaking. Person admits he catches himself here too. Someone is talking to him and instead of listening he’s preparing his next sentences. Later he’ll realize that person had something important to share with him.

Learn to be more humble. Humility and a strong ego are a powerful partnership. Humble egos know who they are and where they have come from, and they don’t need to prove it to others. They can admit a mistake when they make one.

Develop empathy, says Davies. When in on-farm meetings, he emphasizes the importance of taking time to put oneself into the other person’s shoes and consider why they think the way they do.

“He’s not a stupid boy or a stupid man,” he states, and quotes Stephen Covey from his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: “Seek first to understand, before being understood.”

Then, never stop learning.

“My goal is to be the best farm succession planner there is in this area,” Davies says. Over 70 years old, it would be easy for Davies to think he has enough experience to achieve his goal. Yet he still attends seminars and seeks to stay on top of new developments in his area of expertise.

“As long as you are always updating things, trying to go from good to great, you’ll be very successful,” Davies maintains.

Also, delegate authority.

“Allow other people to make decisions,” Person advises. “Let the kids make mistakes and try things.” While letting go is difficult for many people (not just farmers), it’s essential for the grooming of the next generation to successfully manage the equity that has been built up, often with much sweat and sacrifice.

Healthy egos have their children sitting at the table with them when farm advisers come. “They’ll drill me and turn to the son or daughter and say, ‘Do you understand what he said?’” Davies says. It is important for those parents to have their child understand what the business is about. “Those kids are going to have big egos like their parents, but they’re going to be very successful farmers,” Davies claims.

And always make the family a priority.

There are three important components to a successful farm, Davies says — the business management, the ownership, and the family. He describes paying attention to only two of the components as a bicycle with a bent wheel — it’s not going anywhere. “I can have a great farm. I can buy more land and be a good owner. But if my wife is going to leave me, I’ve got a problem!”

Farmers usually know they have to work on their management skills. They work hard at building equity. Sadly, the last thing on their mind is often their family. “I married my wife, I have the kids… I don’t even pay them any attention,” is a mindset Davies often encounters. “You have to spend time in the family,” Davies cautions. “You can improve a business, but it’s hard to improve a broken relationship.”

The post Me, myself and I appeared first on Country Guide.

Agricost farms 145,000 of the 175,000 acres on the island. It also owns the only ferry to the island, and it owns the grain storage, plus the ship loading facility beside it.

It’s hard to convey how unlikely this all seems.

One third of all the EU’s farms are in Romania, according to 2013 numbers from Stats Europe, but most of those farms are very small, even subsistent.

Only about one per cent are over 250 acres, compared to EU average of 6.3 per cent.

Romanian farms are also tied with Latvia for having the lowest overall productivity of any country in the EU.

Plus, there is the island itself, which makes Agricost even more unlikely, although that’s an interesting story too. In fact, it would have been impossible to farm here until 1965, since the Great Island of Braila was only a swamp until the communist regime under Ceausescu used forced labour and political detainees to drain and dike the island, turning it into fertile agricultural land.

Today Agricost produces some of the best crops in the country, achieving almost double the average Romanian farm yields.

The alluvial soils deposited by the Danube River are rich but tricky, says Lucian Buzdugan, Agricost’s chief administrator. “The soil has a very short window in which it can be worked.”

Main crops grown on the farm are corn, wheat, soybeans, sunflower, and barley, with 6,000 acres of alfalfa and 650 acres of peas grown in 2017.

The climate is similar to southern Ontario with hot summers and snow in winter, but the farm itself looks more like the Canadian Prairies, with expansive wheat fields and flat land all under a wide blue sky, while in the far distance are the hazy blue outlines of some of the most ancient mountains on earth, the Macins.

Next to the wheat is a tall, lush corn crop, while bright yellow dots in the sunflower fields signify their approaching bloom. “Soon some 300,000 bee colonies will arrive,” Buzdugan says.

Agricost provides the beekeepers with a place to camp, and gives them food and security in return for the pollinated flowers.

Building a mega-farm

I ask Buzdugan how it can be possible to be successful on a farm of this size, and he confidently says, “What is possible on a small scale is possible on a large one.”

“I have very good staff.”

It turns out that this is crucial too, because Buzdugan means a lot more than that his employees know how to drive their tractors.

Agricost is privately owned, with Constantin Dulute as main shareholder, and it is operated by eight directors (each with an engineering or economics degree), over which Buzdugan is chair.

Each director is responsible for a business sector, i.e. production, accounting, investment, mechanical, commercial.

Next, the land is divided into 29 farms of 5,000 acres each, which Buzdugan says is key to their business strategy. Each farm has a farm manager, an accountant and an assistant manager. Decisions are made as a team, with regular meetings to discuss how to improve production.

Of utmost importance for Buzdugan is that each manager must act with a high level of professionalism. To achieve that, the company is prepared to invest in its employees.

When I ask a similar question of Dulute, the answer is similar. Professionalism is key.

Dulute points out the company annually sends 25 per cent of its employees overseas for training. Professional qualification courses are offered to 260 employees per year, besides regular company training to all 705 employees, with decision-making an important focus.

Employees receive monetary incentives to take training, and free transportation and meals.

As well, the company also takes care of its employees, including a medical clinic and first aid station. And Agricost employees enjoy a higher than average wage, says Buzdugan, earning an average of 800 Euros per month. Minimum wage in Romania is 270 Euros per month. (one euro is roughly C$1.50)

“I want to emphasize that for us it’s not just money that is important but the people, the community and the environment,” Buzdugan says.

Buzdugan, 70 years old, has been with the farm since it was acquired by auction in 2001, and he believes in training for himself just as much as for his employees.

Born into a peasant family in northern Romania, Buzdugan studied agricultural engineering. He began as a farm worker, was promoted to supervisor and eventually to agriculture director of his district. In 1976 he spent a year in Iowa on a corn farm. “That was life changing for me,” he says.

Just last December, Buzdugan received his doctorate with a dissertation based on eight years of studies into the the cultivation of canola.

When he came to Agricost the farm was run down with total production at only 90,000 tonnes per year, and he admits his early years were often difficult, but he’s proud to confirm that in 2016 total production achieved was 416,000 tonnes.

The next goal is 500,000 tonnes per year, he says, but it is being pursued with matching goals to reduce costs and to increase productivity to 1,000 tonnes per employee.

Little things make the difference on almost any farm. On one this scale it is vital. It was on a visit to a French vineyard that Buzdugan was introduced to a water demineralization plant to improve water quality for spraying. Last year a plant was installed at each of the 29 farms at a total cost of one million Euros. That cost was recovered within one spraying season. With the improved water quality, they were able to reduce chemical rates by 20 per cent.

“The chemical companies are not happy,” Buzdugan says, but there were additional benefits including greater spray efficiency since they were able to cut spray volumes in half, and reduced risks for soil residues.

How to grow

It’s the sort of gain that makes a large farm competitive, and it ties straight into the group’s business strategy.

Agricost’s mission statement is “to develop a strong agricultural concern through the implementation of new technologies along with efficient resource management in harmony with the environment.”

Buzdugan and his staff are continually searching for better and improved methods of production. Having their own laboratories and research and development station on the farm allows them to work on technologies specific to their needs.

Field trials are conducted in partnership with Dupont — all new varieties and technologies are first tested on one half hectare, then five hectares, then 100. Only if something passes those tests is it then used on a large scale.

In 2016, 11 kilometres of windbreaks were planted, with another 70 kilometres planted this year.

The windbreaks will trap snow, increasing soil moisture, and they will also reduce wind damage to crops.

The advantage of “big”

“It is certain that introduction of advanced technologies, faster recovery of investments, as well as profitability, are easier in large farms than in small ones, without minimizing the role small farms play,” Buzdugan says.

He cites the situation in Germany after unification, when the eastern part of the country where agriculture had fallen far behind under communism, recovered and even overtook the western part, precisely because of, Buzdugan says, the larger sizes of it farms.

Although large farms in Romania are still few, almost all of them are profitable or even very profitable, he says. “The high degree of Romanian land scattering presents the main serious handicap for the development of a performing agriculture.”

Typically, when a farm owner dies, land is distributed among the children, resulting in ever smaller parcels, many of which are barely an acre. That can mean a nightmare in rental agreements for a farmer seeking to expand.

Agricost is in the fortunate situation that their land is owned by the state, with which they have a 20-year lease agreement.

“I believe that in the EU the level of medium-size farms will prevail in the farming economic environment,” says Buzdugan. In other words, European agriculture will likely continue to be dominated by operations of about today’s sizes, both because of tradition and also because of subsidy programs. He believes though, that EU farmers have the potential to work together in association in order to get the kinds of benefits that Agricost enjoys, and that individual farmers will get more aggressive about renting.

Corn is the largest crop in Romania (polenta is one of their staple foods), and it is the most profitable one for Agricost, which produces both grain corn and corn silage. Agricost has improved their yields and reduced inputs by reducing the traditional spacing in corn from 28 inches between rows and 7.5 inches in row, to 20 inches and 10 inches, respectively.

The change results in better use of in-row water and nutrients, Buzdugan says, and the increased profit in one year paid for the new corn harvesting headers on all the old combines, made necessary by the narrower spacing.

Many western Canadian farmers have begun seeding their canola with the corn planter. Agricost seeds wheat with the corn planter for all the same reasons. The number of seeds per square metre was reduced by half, giving each seed a larger nutrition space. All side shoots are fully developed. Photosynthesis is increased and plant disease decreased, resulting in heavier kernel weight by five to 10 per cent.

By changing the row spacing from seven inches to 10, they could use the same air seeder for both crops. As corn and wheat are seeded at different seasons, this works really well.

“Wheat has tradition in Romania,” Buzdugan says. Seed is 100 per cent Romanian in origin. Wheat yields in 2016 were between 6.5 and 7.0 tonnes per hectare, with the Romanian average at 3.9 tonnes.

Twice a year Buzdugan receives delegations of Argentinean and Brazilian soybean farmers. These tell him that Agricost is better positioned for soybean production than they are. The Brazilian yield average is three tonnes per hectare with GMO seed, Buzdugan says, while Agricost boasts a yield of four tonnes per hectare without GMO.

As a member of the European Union since 2007, Romania is forbidden to cultivate GMO crops. It’s a wrong-headed policy, believes Buzdugan, who points out that the same European Union annually imports 32 million tonnes of GM soybeans. Forbidding the cultivation but allowing the consummation of GMO products is hypocrisy, states Buzdugan. “If something is not good, we shouldn’t consume it.”

If Romanian farmers could use GM seed, Buzdugan believes the country would become the Argentina of Europe. For “his” farm, the greatest gain in planting soybeans is the nutrition it puts back into the field. Agricost already crops 25 per cent of its acres in legumes, primarily in soybeans. The plans are to increase that to 50 per cent.

The entry into the European Union provided Romanian farmers access to EU subsidies, and Buzdugan says the 175 euros they receive per hectare represents 30 per cent of Agricost’s farm income, but he says it is directly invested into new technology and machinery.

Agricost has already reduced fuel usage by 30 per cent, mostly by converting to minimum- or zero-tillage equipment. With the complete conversion of all their planting equipment and by improving their irrigation systems they hope to reduce usage by another 20 per cent or more. (A good part of the five million litres of diesel used annually is consumed by the 400 irrigation pivots.)

Agricost is strategically placed for exports, with 30 to 40 per cent of their wheat sold to Europe to the west, while alfalfa is sold to the Arab lands to the south. Braila is the last stop on the Danube for larger ocean-going ships. Agricost can fill a barge headed to the strategic port of Constanza in the Black Sea in three to four days, shipping from their own ports off the island.

Most of their crop is sold to the big export companies, like Bunge, but also to Maria Trading, a new company with very good relations. “Large farms can achieve a better price by two to five per cent,” says Buzdugan. Greater product quantity, more uniform lots, and the ability to load directly into the barge has definite advantages.

“The risk of loss is much smaller for large companies than for small ones, even in times of agricultural volatility,” Buzdugan believes. Large farms can reduce costs per acre or per bushel using high-efficiency equipment, by reducing power demand and workforce, and by having their own storage facilities that not only allow direct sales but also the development of processing sectors in order to increase added value of the raw product.

Agricost is on the right path, Buz­dugan says. “Large farms are sustainable because they become important players on the market, particularly in the context of increased food demand.”

Agricost’s organizational chart

Agricost has eight directors, with Lucian Buzdugan and president, and with each director having specific business unit responsibilities:

• Department of production with 29 separate farms, each a complete financial unit, with a chief farmer and a chief economist; an alfalfa plant producing pellets and hay for export; and the seed plant.
• Department of service provision: road maintenance and transport; crop protection; shipping; and power
• Commercial department: four “points of delivery”: grain storage, grain drying, material depot, and fuel depot.
• Economic department: economic and Smart Budget departments.
• Department of investment: construction and maintenance.
• Research and development: laboratory and testing.
• Support department: monitoring, human resources, legal department, security, clinic, emergency clinic, environment and civil defense, cantina sector.

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Some 50 years ago, grandfather Santo purchased Casanova from one of the noble families of Siena, the ancient city 40 minutes drive away that is a match for Florence when it comes to art and architecture.

After the Second World War, farm employees flocked to the cities, which meant the aristocratic landowners were left with vacant farms, forcing them to sell. Santo had come from Sicily as a 14-year-old and worked his way up, purchasing first a tractor and then finally the farm.

That stubborn Sicilian mentality was the asset that made a go of Casanova. Then, when Santo had a heart attack in 1989, Bartolo left the military to go back to the heavily indebted farm. His wife Wiebke Buchholz (called Vicky by all the locals who can’t pronounce her German name) joined him in 1999 and they’ve operated the farm together since.

Lined by typical Tuscan cypresses, a long white gravel road today leads from the rolling Crete Senesi (literally, “gray clay” named for the area’s soils) and takes you up to the beautifully landscaped, centuries-old farmhouse with its swimming pool.

Pure white cattle graze on the hill opposite the house; a new mother licks her calf in the comfortable barn.

It all fits together, just like the way the agriturismo (farm bed-and-breakfast) and the cattle breeding enterprises fit together as the two main pillars of Casanova.

How to farm in Italy

Unlike so many agriturismos, which consist mainly of farm buildings with an olive grove, Casanova is, by Italian standards, a large working farm, based on 400 acres, and the Conte family has raised purebred Chianina cows for over 50 years.

Chianinas are a heritage breed that trace their roots back to the ancient Etruscans who lived in the region 2,000 years ago. They ask little in the way of care besides feed, says Wiebke. The 30 cows, together with the 1,100-kg steer that Santo is particularly proud of, roam the 100 acres of pastures along the Crete.

Conte also grows 40 acres of barley and 100 acres of hay for feed. He crops 175 acres of durum wheat, at an average yield of 3.5 tonnes per hectare (51.5 bushels per acre). The wheat is shipped to a local stone mill. Some is made into Santo’s wife Nona Paola’s traditional homemade pasta, pici, and served to guests as the Primo before the Secondo of grilled Chianina beef. More pasta is dried to sell — to guests and to Wiebke’s German relatives and friends, and sold in local co-operative stores.

The climate south of Siena is ideal for durum. Italy produces nearly as much durum wheat as Canada — an average of four million metric tonnes.

Bartolo waves his hand over the steep hillsides which are a deep green in spring, covered in wheat and barley. A hot dry summer follows — earning it the name “Accona — Italy’s desert.” Usually there’s enough rain from November to spring to fill the kernels. The largest farmers sell their wheat to Barilla, one of Italy’s premium pasta makers, whose products can be found on Canadian supermarket shelves. Increased pasta exports are making up for decreasing Italian pasta consumption.

Farmers like the Contes market their durum on the farm and in co-operative stores dedicated to local produce, which are favoured by Tuscany’s many tourists.

“To produce straight grain a farmer needs a minimum of 50 acres,” Conte says. Only a very few own all their land. Wheat is still a lucrative crop, he believes, adding that farmers are still profiting from higher EU subsidies for wheat in comparison with other crops. Without those subsidies farmers couldn’t compete against durum from Canada with its lower production costs. (Bartolo says Barilla prefers Canadian durum to the Italian, because of its higher protein content.)

Wheat subsidies are being lowered annually, and are now tied to production practices such as crop rotations. It was not uncommon for Tuscan farmers to plant wheat 15 years in a row, enabled by heavy clay soils and low disease pressure. Newest EU agriculture policies only allow cereals two years in a row in the crop rotation. The new policies along with lower prices are changing the face of the Tuscan hills.

Having always followed a one-year rotation of cereals with other crops, the Conte farm finds that subsidies tied to production practices are only advantageous. Last year the EU introduced a subsidy for each cow, whereas in the past it was tied to calves, meaning that feedlots had an advantage over cattle producers.

“The Germans make agriculture policy in the EU,” Bartolo says with a pointed look at his German wife. After 30 years as an EU member, Italy still doesn’t really have an agriculture policy worth speaking about, he says. As long as their currency was the Italian lire, farmers did well. That all changed when the euro came in. It is difficult for an Italian farmer to compete with the French and German farmers, he adds. “German and French farmers have two legs, the Italians limp along behind.”

A country of co-ops

Although the steep hillsides would seem a natural fit for no-till farming in order to reduce erosion, Bartolo says that’s not feasible in the heavy clay soil and the dry, hot climate. The main harvest period is in June, after which the fields are worked. They then lie barren in the heat until seeding in November. Without working the fields, the soil would be too hard for the seed drill, he says. He has three 150-hp Massey Ferguson track tractors in his shed, and the fields are worked parallel to the ridges, with track tractors to minimize pressure. Conte stresses the importance of correct placement of water draws, adding that water erosion is rarely a problem except in extreme years.

Bartolo was vice-president of the board of directors of the local bank in Asciano, a high honour for a farmer, Buchholz says. He resigned together with the president two years ago when bank shareholders approved a merger with a larger Sienese bank instead of with the smaller bank Bartolo and the director believe would have been more beneficial for farmers and locals.

As Italian banks are forced to adopt new EU banking laws, financing has become more difficult for the Contes. New loans are dependent on secure income generation, as compared to net worth of the farm. Until Italy has its economic problems solved, things will remain difficult, Bartolo says. More and more farmers are banding together as co-operatives to apply for funding.

That accounts for the butcher shop in Siena. Bartolo was instrumental in forming the co-operative of six farmers that in 2011 opened a meat store, the Macelleria Senese, in Siena as an outlet for the Chianina meat they all produce. The cattle are raised according to strict criteria such as having access to the outdoors at all times. Slaughtering happens in nearby Cortona, in a stress-free environment.

The co-operative hires a butcher who cuts the carcasses in the shop. Each member spends one weekday selling at the shop. “The presence of the farmers ensures the customer that this really is a direct-sales business,” Wiebke explains. The shop also delivers meat to a few restaurants and agriturismos that value the local Chianina beef. “Those that are just looking for cheap meat will go elsewhere,” says Wiebke.

The AgriTurismo

The bed-and-breakfast is Wiebke’s project. It was a slow process to build it to what it is today — offering six modern rooms for up to six persons and homemade meals, a swimming pool and a fishing pond. When Buchholz first came to Casanova, a row of cedars got in the way of the stunning view that guests raved about.

They had been planted and cared for by Santo, and when the family wanted to cut them down, each one became a major battle, as were almost all changes Buchholz implemented. Wiebke’s German heritage clashed often with Santo’s Sicilian approach.

She could count on her mother-in-law Paola’s backing though. The rooms are furnished with antiques that the Conte relatives had stored in the old barn and forgotten. The barn itself was renovated into a cozy dining room where guests enjoy traditional Tuscan homemade breakfasts and dinners by the fireside.

Paola is the heart and hands of the kitchen. Only recently has Wiebke mustered the courage to cook meals for guests, as Paola is getting older. Paola still makes the pasta though, although she admits she uses a machine now instead of forming it by hand. That Wiebke speaks German, English and Italian is a valuable asset for her international guests.

“There are two paths for Tuscan farmers to take in the future,” Bartolo says. Either they expand into large industrial farms or produce for niche markets such as the Siena butcher shop. For him, he says the land made the choice. “A farmer here can only produce for quality, not quantity, because of the climate and topography.”

Besides, local policies that rule out any new buildings on a farm (protecting heritage) make expansion more difficult. The old hayshed that Santo built years ago began collapsing. It took Bartolo four years of wheedling with authorities to get the building permit for a replacement shed. He received 10,000 euros from EU subsidies towards the building. It cost him 12,000 euros for the permits.

Their biggest problem is land taxes, Bartolo says. Italy charges land and income tax, similar to Canada. Land taxes in Italy are higher than income tax, though, and they vary widely according to municipality. “The whole state household has to be paid,” Bartolo says dryly, adding: “Although everyone pays into state health care, we still have to pay privately when we’re sick, because state medicare is so poor.”

Corruption is also a problem. “We have a saying: The law applies to the common person. For friends it is interpretable.”

Despite the challenges the Contes see ahead, 16-year-old son Raphael is planning for a future on the farm. As a child he was never far from his father’s side. Currently he is attending an agriculture college in Siena, the same one his father attended. Whether he really will take over the farm one day remains to be seen.

Until then, Bartolo and Wiebke continue to work hard to keep Casanova a profitable and encouraging enterprise. For inspiration they go for a drive along the top of the Crete. Even for Italians, the Italian landscape is a thing of beauty.

The post A farm in Tuscany appeared first on Country Guide.

It’s perfect too as a representation of the Mayer Energy Farm in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, where Norbert Mayer grows all his crops to feed his biogas plant, which then feeds power into the grid.

Germany is a world leader in the field of renewable energy. It introduced its first Renewable Energy Bill (EEG) in 2004, offering substantial incentives for the production of renewable energy, and it is now embracing a goal of producing 80 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2080.

Many farmers were quick to sign contracts to produce solar, wind and biogas energy. With the EEG2004 guaranteeing 0.55 euro (C$0.78) per kilowatt hour for the next 20 years, it seemed an easy decision.

Biogas seemed especially lucrative, so putting up a plant made a lot of sense at the time. After all, grain prices were still at their record lows, with wheat fetching only 80 euros per tonne (approximately $3.26 per bushel).

At those prices, energy definitely added more value to wheat than bread, which is why, by 2014, German biogas plants were producing more energy than two atomic power plants together, and a report by the Marktforschungsinstitute “Trend” in August 2013 found that more than 80 per cent of biogas plants and 21 per cent of solar plants were owned by farmers. Farmers were receiving more than one-third of the Renewable Energy Fund.

Norbert Mayer has turned all his crops into power since 2011. He made the switch to a biogas plant from a 3,000-head feeder hog operation when hog prices plummeted in 2009 and grain prices were still low.

There were several revisions to the EEG by then, and he was guaranteed a price of 0.25 euro (CS0.35) per kW-h. Mayer’s biogas plant produces 430 kW for almost 9,000 hours a year, adding up to 3.5 million kW. That’s enough power for more than 1,000 households.

“I produce more power than Stühlingen needs,” Mayer says of the nearby town of 2,000 people. Power is produced by fermenting biomass such as plant products or liquid manure. The resulting gas is converted into power, which is fed into the local power system. It sounds simple, but it’s actually quite a complicated system, with added complications from numerous regulations.

For instance, to be eligible for subsidies for a biogas plant through the EEG program, 60 per cent of the biomass must be produced on the farm. There must also be a clear plan with signed contracts for the spreading of the liquid waste, which is high-quality manure.

Mayer crops 225 acres, with corn taking 55 per cent of his crop, followed by sorghum, millet, wheat and triticale. When the corn and sorghum are harvested, winter rye is seeded which is silaged in the following spring, before reseeding to corn and sorghum.

Mayer still purchases a considerable amount of feed and he also buys liquid manure from surrounding farmers. By adding 35 per cent of liquid manure to the biomass he is eligible for a higher subsidy.

It’s clear he needs those subsidies to make it. In recent years, Mayer lost some of his rented land. Prices for land and rent have risen, mostly because of the nearby Swiss neighbours who can afford to pay more for land than the German farmers.

Rising grain prices and changing agriculture policy regulations such as rules on crop rotation have made margins slimmer. But Mayer can’t opt out now; he has invested too much.

“I could have built a dairy barn for 300 cows with the money the plant cost me,” Mayer says.  Instead, he needs to inject funds into paying the biogas plant off before the 20 years of guaranteed prices run out.

Mayer built much of the biogas plant himself with the help of his wife and three children. His daughter Lisa, 21, is studying agronomy and wants to take over the farm. He formed a company with her for the farmland. This company then sells its crops to the biogas plant, which is operated by a separate company owned by Mayer and his wife.

As Canadian farmers will understand from this, tax planning is a crucial part of the job.

The regular market price for power is currently 0.02 euro (just under C$0.03) per kW-h. No one can afford to run a biogas plant for that. “In 20 years, when all the guaranteed price contracts run out, there won’t be any biogas plants,” Mayer thinks, adding, “With the new EG2014 regulation, new biogas plants became completely unattractive.”

Besides, the politics aren’t simple. When asked about the food-versus-energy debate, Mayer says, “It’s a crazy contradiction. On the one hand we’re accused of taking away food with bioenergy production. On the other hand the government pays farmers to take land out of production.”

Government agriculture programs foster extensive as opposed to intensive forms of agriculture, for instance by promoting flower meadows instead of top wheat production. For many average Germans, Mayer says, bioenergy has a bad reputation. Corn is tall, easily seen and considered a monoculture that jeopardizes biodiversity.

Mayer insists that other crops such as wheat are no different. “I don’t use anywhere near the chemicals as I did before I used our crops for bioenergy,” he adds.

Ludwig Käppeler, agriculture officer for the Baden-Württemberg district believes the food-versus-energy debate in Germany doesn’t add up. There is no food shortage anywhere, he insists. “Just look at the low price of flour,” he says, “and what don’t we all throw away!”

Käppeler insists it’s the Americans who are using so much of their corn to produce ethanol that it affects food prices. “If something happens on the global scene, like a major drought, prices go through the roof,” Käppeler says. “It’s speculation, not actual shortage, that makes prices rise.”

There’s another consideration too; 70 per cent of Baden-Württemberg’s farms are part-time operations. That has a lot to do with the way land was passed on within the family. Instead of one child taking over the whole farm, the land was split evenly between all the siblings, resulting in ever smaller parcels.

Efforts have been undertaken to merge land parcels, but the fact that much of the land is rented makes it difficult. Part-time farm operations are here to stay, Käppeler believes. But whereas farmers used to work in manual jobs such as bricklaying, where they could often take their holidays when it was time to make hay, today’s farmers often have more sophisticated jobs.

The system works as long as there are parents or a spouse at home who can manage the farm. Agriculture colleges are also now offering courses for part-time farmers, which are finding good resonance.

One way to improve farm income that requires little labour is to install a solar power system which sells to the grid. Markus Schaub of Dettighofen, Baden-Württemberg invested big into solar energy with the first EEG in 2004. That was a lucrative time with the highest returns. Solar energy panels, unlike biogas plants, require little maintenance once installed. After 20 years their output is still 80 per cent. There aren’t as many unknown financials as there are with biogas, and the return on investment can be easily calculated.

Schaub sells 234 kW-h into the grid, which generates 30 per cent of his farm income with the Baden-Württemberg district having the best total sunshine hours in all of Germany. Schaub’s large shed and barn roofs all slope in the right direction for maximum solar production. Almost all solar panels on farms are mounted on roofs. Germany has some fields of solar panels, but not yet on farms.

The Schaub farm lies idyllically among green rolling hills and small villages. The pastures are dotted with horses. Markus and his wife Birgitta board 100 horses in their stables, complete with a new riding arena. The horses provide 50 per cent of their income; the rest comes from growing seed crops on their 130 acres.

The solar panels are definitely the easiest money on the farm. “We need to rethink our strategy!” Birgitta exclaimed as she thought that over. “Solar power definitely outperforms considering the income versus labour and input ratios.”

Each change in EEG has meant a reduction in guaranteed prices for power produced. In recent years, however, the price of solar panels has also dropped considerably (once produced by German companies, the Chinese now make them much cheaper) so solar can still be profitable, especially for smaller businesses.

In 2014 Schaub added solar panels on a shed, producing 17.5 kW-h which he uses for the farm. It makes for a power bill savings of 40 per cent. “You have to rethink your power usage,” Schaub says. “We try to use our high-energy consumption items like the washing machine and oven during peak hours.”

Peak hours for solar energy are around noon. That’s also the hours of peak public consumption, a win/win situation. There are days now when Germany’s midday consumption is covered completely by solar power. The main challenge with solar energy is still storage. Research is working hard to find an answer but for now, storage ability is limited to batteries, which are expensive.

Schaub has less than 10 years to go on the EEG subsidy program. His solar plant will be more than paid for by that time, so he’ll still make a bit of money. But the good days will be over. Most German farmers are heavily dependent on subsidies, which make up 30 to 50 per cent of their income.

“Without subsidies I wouldn’t start the tractor in the morning,” Schaub says. Schaub farms 260 acres, half of which is pasture for the horses. That’s much bigger than the average farm size of the district. “I was fortunate that my father purchased land whenever it came up for sale,” Schaub says. He’s also lucky to be so close to the Swiss border. Most of their boarding horses come from Switzerland. For the Swiss, it’s much cheaper to board horses in Germany.

“The importance of the Swiss border can’t be overestimated,” Käppeler says. “The economic impact for German farmers is immense.” For Schaub it works positively, but for many farmers the impact is negative.

Like Mayer, many are losing land to Swiss farmers who are more than willing to pay a higher rent or land price. Käppeler can get passionate when it comes to good farmland along the border falling way to big shopping malls catering to Swiss customers. Many of Germany’s products, including food, are much cheaper than in Switzerland.

Times are tough, especially for the smaller German farmer, so it’s good that renewable energy production helps many farmers improve their income, Mayer and Schaub say.

If it’s going to continue to work for those farmers, however, politicians will have to keep being generous. Will they?

The post German bioenergy generates quandary appeared first on Country Guide.

At just under nine acres, I Cianelli is among the 73 per cent of Italy’s farms that are under 12.5 acres. Only five per cent of Italian farms are over 75 acres, although together they account for over half of the country’s nearly 20 million arable acres. Most of those larger farms, however, are in the Po Plain in the north, producing rice, wheat, corn and sugar beets.

The rest of Italy consists largely of hills and mountains, but it is here that Italy’s famous wines and olive oil are grown, plus tomatoes and other vegetables and fruit.

Liguria itself is a narrow strip of mostly sparse and stony pine, oak and chestnuts hills that fall steeply into the sea. Every small bay hosts a coastal resort town, among them such better-known destinations as San Remo or Savona. Except for these towns, it’s wild country, not prime farming by any description, except for the small plain behind Albenga where greenhouses cover the landscape with a flourishing floriculture.

The western section of Liguria is home to a much smaller plain centred around Andora on what is called the Italian Riviera, and it is here that, according to locals, the basil for the world’s best pesto is grown. Beyond that plain, however, the remaining farms hug the steep hillsides, terraced and planted with mostly olive groves and a few vineyards.

This is the home of I Cianelli, a farm that takes its name from the dialect word for the extra-wide terraces unique to that area.

Stefano and Rosanna came to farming late. In 2007, in their early 40s, they left their comfortable jobs as auto mechanic and gym instructor and took over Stefano’s father’s farm. Had they not, I Cianelli might have given up, as one-third of Italy’s farms did between the years 2000 and 2010.

Coming to the farm was a risk — Rosanna and Stefano knew the land base wasn’t enough to pay their bills. But, they thought, “Let’s try it.” The government was offering incentives for agritourism — holidays on the farm. With that help they built a new house with room for 12 guests, offering breakfast and a full dinner of traditional Ligurian food cooked to perfection by Rosanna.

The small vineyard produces 1,000 bottles of wine annually of the local Pigato grape. Most of the farm is in olive groves, about 1,000 trees in groups of 100 to 200 trees, and 200 fruit trees including cherry, peach, apricot, pear and apples.

Stefano works full time on the farm where he is responsible for all the cropping. Rosanna’s job is to look after the guests, especially the kitchen, although during the quiet winter season she continues to work as a gym instructor in Andora.

Ligurian olive oil, produced from the Taggiasche olive, has a good reputation. The oil is lighter, with a milder flavour than that of southern Italy, and is wonderful with fish dishes. 2014 was a poor year for olive production. The last two years were too wet, unusual for this normally arid region. It rained during flowering, reducing pollination.

Recently an Asian pest has been troubling them too — the olive fly, which lays eggs in unripe olive fruits. Stefano opens a shrivelled black olive exposing a tiny white larva. “In this last year the olive harvest was terrible,” he says. “I only got 170 litres of oil.”

At 10 euros (C$14) for a one-litre bottle, that’s not much return on a year’s work, he knows. Normally the total would be around 1,000 bottles.

Stefano prefers organic pest control, even though he’s not a certified organic farmer. Depending on the weather, he’ll treat the olive trees with up to two applications of insecticide. He’s researching an organic solution for the olive fly with kaolin, a white clay, but it washes off with rain, and is quite expensive. Another option is the Dow AgroSciences product “Spintor Fly” which is mixed with water in bottles and hung in the trees as traps.

Small farms survive by offering a premium product to customers with whom they have a close relationship. Stefano is particular about the processing of his crops. The friend who processes his olives owns an old stone press but also a modern one that can manage the temperature very precisely. Olives should be pressed at a low temperature for best quality — preferably 17 C but not more than 30 C. They need to be pressed within 24 hours of picking, faster is better, to reduce the chance of fruit overheating or fermenting. Particular care must be taken with hygiene to produce a premium oil without a trace of rancidity, which can happen if equipment is not kept absolutely clean.

I Cianelli’s grapes are pressed in the wine cellar of a friend in Imperia, a nearby town. It’s these relationships, knowing those who will do the best job, that are so important to Stefano.

The olives and grapes thrive in the arid climate, but the fruit trees are irrigated. I Cianelli’s small well cannot keep up with the water necessary so Stefano supplements it with a rainwater pool. The house is supplied with council water from an aqueduct.

It’s the agritourism which pays over half the bills. Passionate about their business, Rosanna and Stefano have built up a name. I Cianelli is open year round, and summers are always totally booked out. Breakfast, a wonderful affair with Rosanna’s whole wheat bread, jam from the fruit trees, local cheeses and a Moka pot of thick black Italian coffee with hot milk, is served on the patio with its lovely view over Andora’s hills and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. Dinner is taken at the large oak table inside.

Only environmentally friendly materials were utilized in the construction of the house. The plaster is of natural hydraulic lime with no trace of cement. Woodwork and furnishings are of solid oak. Rosanna takes care to source and use local organically grown products whenever possible, such as the wheat for her whole wheat bread and foccacia, and the cheeses for breakfast. The majority of vegetables come from her parents’ garden.

The European Union’s support for agritourism is part of a strategy to halt the exodus of youth from the farms. Unemployment for youth under 25 in the Andora region, which is heavily dependent on tourism, was at an alarming 47 per cent in October 2014 and the national average wasn’t all that much better. The EU programs are geared to younger farmers in poorer rural regions, like Liguria.

Through agritourism, value is added to farm produce by serving it as meals or processing into oil, wine or jams sold to the guests.

Even so, to qualify for the agritourism label, farmers must spend more hours working on the farm than on tourism. Food must also originate primarily from on-farm produce or local sources, and traditional culture and food must be promoted.

The concept took hold quickly among Italians, for whom foods cooked with local products have long been highly valued. Food for Italians is not just about eating — it is about relationships, both to the people sharing the food and to those growing and marketing it.

These relationships are on display at the local market where housewives seek only the best-quality products. It’s also on display when guests eat at I Cianelli. Dinner is not to be quickly eaten at Rosanna’s. It’s a leisurely affair prepared with love, beginning with an antipasto, followed by the primo and second courses enhanced by a glass of I Cianelli’s wine. The meal ends with dessert, maybe Rosanna’s olive cake dipped in Limoncello. By now everyone is too full and it’s too late to drive the curves down to Andora’s nightlife!

Now, Rosanna and Stefano are evolving toward a vegetarian menu, although it will still incorporate eggs and cheese, with fish and meat reserved for specific events. This change, along with I Cianelli’s concern for the environment and the warm hospitality of its owners, provides the agritourisimo with a strong advantage. Rosanna offers personal fitness lessons and Stefano mountain bike tours. Both are eager to recommend hiking and biking trails off the beaten path, plus day trips to one of the borgos (villages) tucked into the hills, such as the medieval town of Zuccarello, or Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena crowning the top of the mountain.

Their 20-year-old son Simone is home for a year. He studied accounting but has plans to become a chef, the kitchen being his passion. Stefano and Rosanna hope he will take over the farm. There is room to grow — land is available next door. Stefano would expand the vineyard and add a processing and bottling plant. He talks of greenhouses for vegetables. But he’s 50 now, and unless he knows Simone will come back to the farm, he’s not willing to work harder than he already does.

The steep hills leave little room for machinery. Most of the work is hand labour — weeds are controlled with the string trimmer or rototiller. The olive trees and grapes are pruned by hand. Not all of the 1,000 trees get pruned every year. Stefano is fit — he’s an avid mountain biker. But it’s still hard work.

Their marketing could be improved, Stefano admits. “Ligurians don’t market themselves well.” He says they are not as aggressive as the people in the Tuscany, who advertise in the newspapers and on the Internet. Rosanna says Ligurians are more reserved. She thinks it comes from their past, when Ligurians were continually attacked by pirates and armies. They learned to retreat, to say nothing, although they are very friendly when spoken to.

“It was a big change for me,” Stefano says of becoming a farmer. For 25 years he was used to waking early and going to work. One big challenge for him was the winter, especially the rainy days when he couldn’t go outside. Now he’s adjusted. “The lifestyle is far more relaxed and rewarding,” he says. The income is not as secure or as high, “but it is worth it.” Rosanna loves the farm and particularly enjoys the agritourisimo. “The guests become friends,” she says. “They send emails: ‘Ciao, Rosanna,’ they write in English, French, Spanish and Italian.”

Stefano and Rosanna are aware that their business depends heavily on tourism. Subsidies don’t contribute much to their income. Italy’s volatile economic and political situation worries them, but they hope to increasingly draw foreign tourists too. “I hope the economic crisis will be better the next year,” says Stefano, noting that next October they will build a swimming pool and add two more rooms. “I want to survive.”

This article was originally published as “Ciao bellissima!” in the February 17, 2015 issue of Country Guide

The post The olive groves and vineyards of Liguria appeared first on Country Guide.

It is the new polo clubhouse, where an international polo tournament will be hosted this weekend.

Alan Miller, owner of Lilayi Farm, waits for me in the office behind his computer. From there he can cast an eye not only toward the maintenance yard but also toward their steaming grain dryer and storage facilities.

This is one picture of Zambian agriculture… modern, high tech and efficient.

Five hours to the north, near Mpongwe, I find another picture. It is quite a different one.

Jessy Mpupulwa is struggling to harvest his 150 acres of corn. He has the machinery to plant and spray the crop, but not yet to harvest it, so the corn must be picked by hand.

Jessy is one of a swelling number of emerging farmers — small-scale farmers who have grown beyond the hoe and oxen, and who have increasing financial and business skills, but are held back, among other things, by lack of access to credit.

Nearby, Jasinta Bulaya farms with the strength of her hands. Her brother’s oxen plow most of her fields, then she plants and weeds with her hoe, hiring help when she can afford it. Jasinta is a model small-scale farmer, using the conservation farming methods that others just talk of.

But Jasinta wants to break through to more. In fact she needs more, because she wants to send her son to agriculture college.

Zambia’s agriculture is a collage of what can be achieved in African agriculture, and also what isn’t being achieved.

The country has the potential to be Africa’s breadbasket. That’s a consensus that even Rabobank touts on the website for its Emergent Farmer program for Zambia.

Flying into the capital city of Lusaka, you look down to see irrigated crop circles that remind you of southern Alberta. To the northeast is the Mkushi farming block, where mostly white farmers grow immense tracts of tobacco, wheat, corn and soybeans, and where they also raise large herds of cattle.

A state-of-the-art grain-handling and -processing facility there is farmer run and owned.

Then south of Lusaka, in Mazabuka on the road to the Victoria Falls, you drive through massive plantations of sugar cane, a growing industry here.

A congenial climate, plus fertile soils and some of Africa’s best waterways combine to make Zambia a farmer’s paradise.

But only for a few — the few produce almost all of the country’s surplus. Meanwhile, the greater part of Zambia’s farmers still struggle just to exist and eat.

Commercial operations

“Zambia is far from reaching its potential agriculturally,” says Alan Miller. His 4,500-acre mixed farm is one of about 500 commercial farms in Zambia, many of which operate 10,000 acres or more.

Their farmyards rival the best in Canada with the latest grain augers rising about the shiny steel bins, and with the biggest and newest John Deere equipment standing ready in the shed.

Almost all of Zambia’s commercial farmers are white, many from South Africa or Zimbabwe where they fled repressive conditions although Miller himself comes from one of the oldest farming families in the country.

He irrigates 1,100 acres with centre pivots fed by wells, including 600 acres of wheat and malting barley in the cooler, dry season from May to October followed by 300 acres of corn plus seed corn and soybeans during the November to April rainy season.

As well, Miller runs 125 acres of cabbages year round for a large retailer.

The rest of Lilayi Farm is either pasture land for the cattle herd, or used for hay, including for a thriving local forage market. Small farmers are raising more cattle, but don’t have the land to produce adequate feed.

“Irrigation is your insurance,” Miller says. Dryland corn yields between 45 and 160 bushels per acre. If the rains are late or if they stop at the wrong time, the consequences are severe.

Irrigation eliminates that risk, guaranteeing not only the moisture needed for pollination and grain fill, but also that the crop gets off to a fast, uniform start so it can tap the annual cycle of heat units and sunshine.

Weather isn’t the only issue, though. A big challenge for Zambian farmers comes from constantly changing government policies. When a government changes, it does more than bring in a new leader. All the ministers and civil servants change too.

That means farm organizations have to explain their cases and situations all over again.

This year, for instance, the Zambian government announced new water rights policies. Miller is concerned the change will cause considerable commotion and confusion among farmers. The new act is not really enforceable, he thinks. It doesn’t cover the availability correctly.

Getting the voice of farmers heard and listened to on such issues is essential, but it also takes energy that should ideally be invested in actual farming.

Imported inputs

Most of Zambia’s farm inputs — fuel, fertilizer, chemicals, and machinery — are imported, and with the lack of saltwater access, plus poor rail infrastructure, everything arrives by truck, increasing prices.

The economic squeeze then continues on the other end. Government often puts tight restrictions on food exports, so farmers are captive to domestic markets. Neighbouring Zimbabwe, Angola and Congo need food, but can often get it from Russia or Ukraine, Miller says.

Interest rates are also high at 10 to 12 per cent for the U.S. dollar which most commercial farmers work with, since American currency is less prone to fluctuating inflation. By comparison, the Zambian kwacha has an interest rate of 28 per cent.

But for Miller, such constraints — bad as they are — aren’t as bad as his most costly challenge.

That’s theft. “That’s where the country’s problem really is,” says Miller. “The amount of work we spend checking and rechecking things, it really gets you down.”

Many years of experience have taught him where the problem losses are — bolts, fertilizer, soybean seed. And corn.

Zambia’s staple food disappears straight from the field. Lilayi Farm begins harvest with 22 per cent moisture, although millers demand 12.5 per cent for safe storage in the humid climate. He’d prefer to let it field dry, especially with locally high costs for fuel, but thieves won’t steal high-moisture corn that they can’t easily sell.

Dry corn is a different story. Once the field moisture gets down to 15 per cent or below, theft can be up to 40 to 60 bushels an acre, a third of total yield, and it’s proving extremely difficult to stop, or even to slow down.

Middle scale

Jessy Mpupulwa owns two smaller tractors, a three-row planter, a 10-metre sprayer, a fertilizer spreader and a small truck. That puts him a good notch above Zambia’s small farmers but a long way from commercial operations like Miller’s. “Harvest is the bottleneck,” Mpupulwa says. He hires about 20 people for three months to help pick the ears, which are shelled by machine.

Labour is scarce during harvest. He sometimes transports workers from 180 km away who camp at the farm.

The long harvesting period gives thieves lots of opportunity to steal. Mpupulwa doesn’t have the options Miller does. He doesn’t have the machinery to get the crop off quickly. He doesn’t have the drying facilities, so he has to wait much longer for moisture to go down. Like many others, he cuts at least part of the corn and stooks it, so it’s easier to check. Mpupulwa spends a small fortune on 10 security guards for his crop.

One farmer recently complained that even security guards don’t stop the stealing. They just limit it to their own family and friends and family.

Mpupulwa was once manager of the coffee plantation of a very large commercial farm. He travelled, and gained a good sense of business and finance. (Dutch Gibson, consultant with the Conservation Farming Unit of Zambia, says one of the biggest problems of small farmers is that they are financially illiterate.)

But that edge doesn’t give Mpupulwa access to the credit he needs to grow. Banks don’t lend easily to black farmers. Mpupulwa says that’s due to a heavy rate of defaulting on loans by black farmers. Even were he to get credit, interest rates are a staggering 25 to 30 per cent for the local currency that small and emerging farmers work with.

Banks want land title as collateral, something few small farmers have. Mpupulwa is in the process of getting title to his land. Chiefs control the tribal lands, and are much more willing to sell to large companies who will pay good money than to allow the farmer on the land to get the land title.

“Farmers have the right to have ancestral land which they have inherited surveyed so that they can’t be displaced,” Mpupulwa says. “But there are few who do that.”

Mpupulwa is a member of the Zambian National Farmers Union (ZNFU) and takes advantage of the Lima Pak program to purchase inputs. The Lima project requires a 50 per cent down payment, the other 50 per cent after harvest. “The Lima Pak is reliable and has made farming much easier,” Mpupulwa says.

Immediately after Mpupulwa sells his corn, he purchases 25 per cent of the next crop’s inputs when they are at their seasonal lows. Few small farmers have that kind of cash.

Most small farmers sell to the FRA (Food Reserve Agency), a government program. It’s often a sale on credit. In the past, farmers might sometimes wait months for payment. The current government has improved that timing considerably, Mpupulwa says.

Farmers the size of Mpupulwa, who produces over 5,000 bags of corn (50 kg/bag), are in a better position. The miller will come to the farm to collect the corn. They can also negotiate a better price. Mpupulwa hopes to get about US$260/tonne for his corn. The floor price for the FRA is $200/tonne, while Lilayi Farm will get $270/tonne, because of its ability to deliver early.

“If we were given the same conditions as commercial farmers — forward sales, loans for inputs and combine harvesters — we would do as well or better,” Mpupulwa says. Not having that, they will remain stagnant. “We can’t get past the bottlenecks.”

Small, but eager to grow

“Zambia’s emergent farmers are growing and gaining confidence,” Dutch Gibson says. Farm groups are working with the banks, which are becoming more willing to provide loans without demanding land title as collateral.

Mid-size farmers like Mpupulwa also go to seminars, they get the monthly magazine from the national farm union, and he gets updated prices on his smartphone.

All that information, Mpupulwa believes, makes him a better farmer and gives him an edge when negotiating with end-users of his crops.

But it is information few small farmers can access. Jasinta Bulaya lives at the edge of her small family village close to the town of Mpongwe. There is no electricity or running water to her home. A widow with two older children, she owns 16 acres and crops about seven. She grows 2.5 acres of corn using conventional methods, and another 2.5 using conservation farming (CF) methods, plus another couple of acres of peanuts and some beans.

Her brother plows the worked acres with his oxen, although she prepares her CF field as taught, making holes with the hoe for each planting basin.

Jasinta hires help for the weeding, which is a continuous struggle in the rainy season. The heat together with almost daily rains keep weeds growing faster than anyone can keep ahead of. Herbicides would make the job easier and are more reliable than hiring workers, but they are expensive.

Jasinta is among the top 10 per cent of small farmers whose corn outyields the average small farmer by 15 to 60 bushels per acre. The yields of her conventional corn are more than double the average, around 80 bushels per acre compared to the area average of just over 35.

Her CF field can yield 160 bushels per acre, equal to that of a commercial farmer. Working harder, being more committed and having a desire to learn make her exceptional. While most small farmers in Mpongwe only grow corn, Jasinta regularly rotates with peanuts and beans to improve both soil and cash flow.

Fertilizer comes from oxen manure and compost, which is very effective but time consuming. It is the price of urea for top dressing that troubles her. Only 55 per cent of small farmers use fertilizer — another reason for poor yields.

The government Farm Input Support Program (FISP) sells packs of hybrid corn seed and starter fertilizer to small farmers at a discounted price, which must be paid in advance. It sounds like a good deal, but the packs are often delivered late, or sometimes not at all, due to corruption along the way.

Jasinta manages to have money to purchase at least part of her seed and fertilizer without the FISP so that she can plant on time (90 per cent of the government’s agriculture budget is spent on the FISP and Food Reserve Agency, leaving little for much needed research and extension programs).

The government and NGOs (non-government organizations) are all encouraging CF to improve yields, yet most farmers find the method too laborious, and others lack the commitment or the credit to do the job right.

It helps explain why, although 66 per cent of Zambians make at least part of their living from agriculture, half of the surplus food produced and sold by the sector is grown by just three to five per cent of its farmers.

It takes Jasinta three weeks to harvest her peanuts with 10 workers. She harvests the corn herself with another woman, often camping in the field to try to prevent theft, which is a big problem for her too. She can lose up to a quarter of her yield to thieves.

It isn’t an easy existence, but she makes enough money to buy food and medicine and to send the children to school.

Yet Jasinta also feels she has hit a ceiling on her farm. Her son wants to go to agricultural college. It’s expensive, but it is her goal, and hopefully after college he will come back. That would make things much easier.

Will Zambia become the breadbasket of Africa? Maybe.

Jasinta hopes it will. So do Jessy Mpupulwa and Alan Miller. To make it happen may be three times as hard, however, because each group faces such real limitations.

I look at their situations and wonder if it will be possible. Maybe, I agree. But it will take time.

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