October 2 Lower Saxony

Oct. 2

Today we traveled to Hanover by train and met Jorn Dwehus, CEO of the Farmers Association of Lower Saxony.  Jorn spent some time in America at the University of Nebraska, so he speaks very good English.  He is leaving Saturday for America to participate in the McCloy Fellowship.   

We first went to Jorn's office, and one of his assistants gave us a presentation about Agriculture in Lower Saxony.  Lower Saxony in the largest agricultural region in Germany.  Almost every kind of farming you can think of.  Lots of hogs and chickens, dairy, wheat, potatoes, corn (largely for Bio-fuel), vegetables, and more.  We ate lunch in the cafeteria in the basement, a soup of green beans, potatoes, and sausage, we all thought it was very good.

 From there Jorn drove us to tour a modern dairy farm.  They milk about 500 cows and raise all the calves.  The dairy looked much like an American dairy, Large covered freestall barn with a 40 stall rotary parlor.  The ration consisted largely of grass silage and corn silage with grain and soy.  Much of their income comes from energy production,. The roof of the freestall barn is covered with solar panels and they have a large bio-gas plant on the farm.  Energy production is heavily subsidized.  They sell all the electricity they generate and buy back what they need to operate the farm, because they can buy it for a lower price then they sell it for (sound like government?).  There are also windmills everywhere you look, but none that are on this farm.  It was interesting to hear about some of the regulations they have to comply with.  They would like to add another 300 cows, but they are not allowed to because of the nitrogen that would be emitted into the forests surrounding the farm.  They have tried to mitigate this issue but are unable to.  The manure can all be handled by the bio-fuel plant, so that is not an issue, and they can grow the feed.  The issue is simply the nitrogen emissions into the air that will fall on the forest.

Automatic feed pusher

One happy cow, she has her own back scratcher

Corn silage to feed both the cows and the bio-gas plant

Bio-gas

One of two generators that runs off the gas from the bio-gas plant

40 stall rotary parlor

Next we toured the town of Celle. This is an old town dating back about 700 years.  The three oldest buildings are the castle, the church, and the town hall.  The homes are all very old German style houses, very beautiful and ornate design.  The entire town was untouched by the war, which is unusual for this area.

We had dinner with the Dwehus family (Jorn and his family).  It was very fun to visit with a German family, they have 5 children ranging in age from 20 to 2.  I was intrigued that the older children (15 and 20) were allowed to have beer with the adults, perfectly normal in Germany, They didn't drink as much as the Americans.  We also saw their horse stables.  They board horses for people and have an indoor arena.  (250 Euro/horse/month)  The second daughter loves the horses and now wants to visit Paul and ride the range with him.  We teased the older girls about finding them American farmers to marry.