Adaptation in the Alps

The foothills of the Bavarian Alps have been there forever—green and lush, with grass that grows fast and sweet. It’s a dairy cow’s idea of paradise. But paradise has some new neighbors and some new issues, which might be familiar to American farmers.

Changes are on the way.

Urbanites, who used to make weekend trips to see mountain vistas, have decided in recent years they would rather own those vistas than rent them.

“That used to be a dairy farm,” says Josef Hiemer, as he drives past a home and barn on the edge of a village so beautiful it looks like it fell off a postcard. “And that. And that and that, too.”

Hiemer is the director of agriculture for the Department of Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry for the Bavarian region called Allgau. One of his department’s responsibilities is to help train young farmers to meet today’s challenges. High land prices—brought on, in part, by competition from nonfarming interests—present a huge challenge. Those houses on the edge of the village? If farmland had been purchased along with them, it would have cost about $21,000 per acre.

“Land buyers who pay the best prices are nonfarmers who save their money [invest] in agricultural land,” Hiemer says. Land prices have shot up in recent years “due to the financial crisis and [also] the subsidies for the production of biogas.”

The biogas component relates to Germany’s commitment to wean itself from nuclear power by 2030. To encourage alternative energy production, the government offers financial incentives for on-farm biogas generators. The feedstocks that fuel those generators are crops planted in fields that traditionally have provided feed for dairy cows and other livestock. Especially in northern Germany,
that has caused a crush of competition for farmland, including hay ground. The ripple effect of high land prices and fewer hay acres has also hit southern Germany and Bavaria, where farmers depend on forage production to support the important dairy industry.

Cashing in on tourists. Near Görisried, in the Allgau region, the Weber family grows hay in fields so green they dazzle the eye. They get four, five and sometimes six cuttings a year of mixed grasses, legumes, clover and herbs. As the hay dries, it takes on a soft texture and a scent like herbal tea. No wonder the Webers’ 50 Brown Swiss look so content and produce about 24,000 pounds each of milk annually.

For generations, it was the milk from the Webers’ cows that filled the family’s bank accounts. Now, they supplement it with agro-tourism euros. They rent out three apartments to families from the cities. The apartments are in a chalet planted just off a mountain pasture fringed by pine trees, a place Heidi would love. (www.kittelhof.de)

At 200 rentals per year, the tourists provide 10 to 20% of the family’s income.

Matteus Weber and his son Daniel also sell meat from bull calves milk-raised as veal. They sell purebred cows and bulls, as well. Daniel’s wife, Angelica, keeps a busy vegetable garden.

A few kilometers from the Webers, the Babel family has taken the agro-tourism concept to a higher level. Besides milking about 60 cows, Herbert and son Tobias run a kind of agro-Disneyland, with a 400-bed hotel, indoor and outdoor heated pools, miniature golf, two restaurants, a microbrewery and cheese plant ... all in one location. Look out the window from one of the restaurants and you see pastures, cropland, another picture-book village and, in the distance, ski slopes on the front range of the Alps.

“Landgasthof Berghof,” as the bustling property is called, is vastly different from a Bavarian dairy of a few years ago.

Regulatory landscape. Part of Hiemer’s job is to help farmers navigate the eddies and swirls of European Union (EU) regulations and subsidy programs. He is a busy man these days because the EU’s farm programs are due for a major change in 2013. Typically, farmers get paid by the hectare. Payments used to be based on what crops or livestock were on those hectares. In the Allgau region of Bavaria, Hiemer says those payments are about $450 per hectare. But beginning this year [2013], productivity won’t matter; all payments will be the same, regardless of crops or livestock.

Currently, livestock farmers also receive subsidies for reducing stocking rates on pastures. The idea is to reduce the amount of nitrogen runoff from manure. Similarly, crop farmers get paid for using fewer fertilizer and crop-protection products. Those provisions are not due for a change.

energy impacts. Biogas is not a major industry in this area, but solar power is. Red-tiled rooftops are retrofitted with solar panels that push power to the local area and to the grid. Farmers have big roofs, and they have profited proportionally from German government payments. Hiemer says that cash-flow will slow as the government backs off some of its commitment. But the program has already changed the landscape ... or at least the view of red roofs now glinting silver and black in the sun.

Like all other farmers in the area, the Webers also get subsidies from the EU no matter what they raise on their 52 hectares of grassland. It gives them some peace of mind. But it comes at a price, influencing business decisions the family makes.

With the new subsidy system, 36-year-old Daniel Weber says he will shift his concentration from increasing herd size to growing more forages. He also eventually would like to get a few more cows but doesn’t feel much pressure to do so. He pays a lot of income taxes, he says, but is debt-free and has government health insurance. Daniel has a “What? Me, worry?” look about him.

“Have you ever seen a content farmer?” Hiemer asks with a grin. “Here is one.” â¦�

(BS)

Copyright 2013 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.