Letter From Europe

Letter from Europe: Europe waves goodbye to the old family farm show

No more are the big agricultural shows aimed at the general visitor from the countryside, complete with wife and kids. Now they are targeting the serious spenders

by NORMAN DUNN

Specialist visitors are now wanted at agricultural exhibitions – and they’d better have money to spend and solid investment plans for their farming businesses.
The chances are that they’ll be asked all about these when they pass through the gates of a European farm show.

Letter from Europe: Meat and milk join the climate change hit-list

While Europe’s farmers are being encouraged to protect the climate by growing more trees, consumers are being told to down less burgers, sausages and milk shakes

by NORMAN DUNN

European highway users are being continually browbeaten to reduce their “carbon footprint” through buying and driving smaller autos and keeping speeds down on the roads.

This hasn’t affected agriculture too negatively. In fact, it has greatly helped farm survival in some areas by kick-starting a stronger demand for renewable fuels, such as canola biodiesel and ethanol from wheat, potatoes and sugar beet.

Letter from Europe: Clean power from a new generation of fuel ideas

Crops that produce their own electricity, intelligent greenhouses and sun-powered cattle-feeding robots – these are just some of the new strategies emerging for natural energy production

by NORMAN DUNN

The fuel-from-the-fields revolution hasn’t lingered long with simple biogas, ethanol and biodiesel. Even second generation biofuels such as BtL (biomass to liquid), where biogas is liquefied to give highly efficient synthetic fuel, is now being overtaken by simpler, more efficient and even more climate-friendly strategies.

Letter from Europe: Back to the straw-bedded barn for dairy cows?

by NORMAN DUNN

What’s the best housing system for dairy cattle? This is the subject of arguments you’ll hear raging in just about every country bar in Europe’s milk production regions.

While stalls or free stalls have definitely won over a huge majority, there’s still a staunch rearguard fighting for simple straw-bedded barns. In fact, a paper by the respected Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) indicates that there’s a swing back to this for milking herds in that country.

Where there’s plenty of room per cow – and the recommended minimum is 4.25 square metres of bedded area for a 500-kilogram animal – foot and leg problems and general cow health are claimed to be much better in simple straw barns than those with stall systems.

Letter from Europe: Europe gets rid of the acre – but hangs on to the pound

A uniform system of weights and measures makes good sense within a common market. But European lawmakers have reckoned without minor rebellions on almost every farm

by NORMAN DUNN

It had to come. The European agricultural administration in Brussels has long moaned about the continued existence of “archaic” units of measurement in various member countries.

Letter from Europe: Reclaiming wetlands – Europe’s about-turn in countryside policy

Schemes in several European countries are paying farmers to return cropland to marsh, permitting vanished or endangered species to come home

by NORMAN DUNN

In Europe’s coastal areas, some farmers are being encouraged to break drains and block ditches, letting their fields fall back into natural wetlands. The rewards include a richer wildlife – and payments of up to $500 dollars per acre!

For 45 years, the Rowson family were busy putting in drains to reclaim wetland on their Lincolnshire farm in East England. At that time, the British government wanted morecrop output and were happy to pay for the new ditches and pipes.

LETTER FROM EUROPE: Water buffalo get a foothold on north European farms

Only 10 years ago, few would have taken these animals seriously as a livestock enterprise in the north. Now buffalo herds are proving profitable as providers of tasty and healthy meat

by NORMAN DUNN

In the not too distant past, livestock farmers in Europe tended to stay lifelong with the same species.

Once a dairy farmer, always a dairy farmer. When a young farmer went down the swine production road, he tended to follow it to retirement.

But that’s an attitude changing fast due to disappearing margins and the sometimes desperate search for diversification when competition gets too hot in traditional enterprises.

Letter from Europe: Curbing the pricing powers of the mighty supermarkets

It’s high time for an EU-wide organization to keep a close eye on marketing and price agreements for home-grown food and energy, says France. And, for once, nearly everyone in Europe agrees

by NORMAN DUNN

Where national food markets are dominated by just a few giant retail chains, producers of milk, meat and vegetables lose out when the high street price wars start. Now, a European Union (EU) initiative aims to curb the pricing powers of the mighty supermarkets. 

Letter From Europe: Denmark’s target: 30 pigs sold per sow in five years

One reason Danish producers are outstripping their European counterparts – and pleasing their bankers in the process – may be the country’s tough inheritance laws

by NORMAN DUNN

While the hog sector in most of Europe struggles to produce 20 slaughter pigs per year from each breeding sow, the Danes already manage 25 and are confident that 30 will soon be the accepted average. This outlook is pleasing Danish bankers just as much as the hog producers. Read on to find out why!