October 4 Lower Saxony

Today we visited a large potato and onion processing warehouse.  Owned by a large Coop that handles many different crops and different and supporting businesses for the farmers.  They handle about 90,000 tons of potatoes and 25,000 tons of onions per year.  One difference I see is that the farmers here don't use trucks.  The potatoes and onions are delivered to the warehouse in big trailers pulled by farm tractors, usually two trailers at a time, side dump.  There are trucks that take the product to the stores, Not like American trucks, cab-over 6 wheeled trucks pulling 40 foot trailers.  The trucks must be very compact to navigate the narrow streets.

All the equipment here seems to be very small, Jorn told us that the law states that farm equipment cannot be more than 3 meters wide to drive on the road.  But even the fork lifts in the warehouse were very small, the operators stood on a little platform behind the lift and loaded pallets in the trucks.

We left Hanover by train for Dresden, about a 3 hour trip.  Dresden, located on the eastern side of Germany was heavily bombed and largely destroyed during WW ll.  After 40 years of communist control, it has a very different look and feel than Hanover.  Here in the east the farm seem to be larger and more open, larger fields.

We were picked up by our host Jorg? at the train station, taken to our hotel and then to dinner with the president of the Saxon "Farm Bureau".  It seems to me the issues facing agriculture are basically the same everywhere you go.  The president talked about how after reunification in 1989 the farmers in the west sent representatives here to the east to "steal" the ag markets and they are still trying to get them back.  Environmentalists and Animal welfare are big problems causing farms to get bigger, but now the big farms are the problem.   

Following Dinner we returned to our hotel were we visited with Jorg for a couple of hours about his experience in the McCloy program and shared our impressions with him.  It was reaffirmed to me that people are shaped by their own life experience we often see the same things very differently.  We talked about the social safely net in Germany as compared to America.  In his opinion people in America are allowed to fall flat on their face when they fail but they are allowed to get back up and start again.  In Germany you are prevented from falling on your face, but it is nearly impossible to start over.

Impressions that I have had so far:

·         Lighting is poor, homes and buildings look and feel dark

·         People are generally not very friendly, although our hosts have been great, just not the people on the street

·         most people take pride in the things they have, homes and yards are well kept

·         If you don't drink beer and coffee you can easily dehydrate