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Innovative Scandinavians pioneer standardized farm buildingsStandardized buildings, such as the so-called "Swedish barn," are proving cheaper to build than custom farm buildings and tend to get quicker approvals from local authorities. They may just change the face of the countrysideby NORMAN DUNNIt was a Norwegian farmer who showed me my first self-propelled harvester for strawberries. This was a neat rebuild based on a racing go-kart with the choice of electric drive or simple pedal power. On each side were trays filled with punnets for the fruit. The operator motored down the rows in the strawberry fields, sitting in comfort just a few inches above the ground and picking without any back bending.Heard of fields with central heating? Go to Norway! There, an industrial concern has used waste heat from its manufacturing plant to heat nearby fields in spring via underground piping. Vegetable crops could be drilled weeks before conventional fields and the farm had early crops out on the market in Oslo before the neighbours' plants were through the ground. An open mind to innovation seems to be an important part of the character of the average Scandinavian farmer - and agricultural adviser. Sweden, for example, is also the world leader in acceptance of automatic milking machine by farmers. Milking machinery expert Rolf Hansson, who works with DeLaval in Stockholm, tells me that 65 to 70 per cent of new dairy buildings now being built in Sweden have automatic milking systems fitted as standard. Less than ten years after the introduction of the very first robot milker in that country, there are now an estimated 350 units working on Swedish dairy farms. In neighbouring Norway, dairymen started fitting milking robots much later. But last year a total of 45 were delivered to farms there. Sweden is also pioneering the standardized dairy building this year with the "Swedish Barn" system from DeLaval. This idea is based on a single steel-framed, steel-clad building always 27.4 metres wide but delivered in various lengths for 60, 120 or 180 free stalls. At one end is a milking area where a single herringbone can be slotted in for a small herd, or as many as three automatic milking units for 180 cows and more. Standard for all sizes is a central feeding passage and solid floor gangways between the stalls cleaned by automatic scraper systems. The advantage of this sort of standardization is that a uniform design usually means a rapid go-ahead from local building authorities. The concept can also be much cheaper than custom-built housing. The first few "Swedish Barn" examples are being built, complete with milking parlour and bulk tanks, for around $500 Cdn per cow. At almost exactly the same time, one of Denmark's largest farm building companies has launched a similar concept for hog housing. But Gräkjaer Staldbyg goes a step further with its "euro-farm" concept. The buildings are not only standardized, but prefabricated too. Staldbyg claims that its euro-farm buildings can be erected and finished 30 per cent faster than conventional ones, despite featuring slatted flooring and underground liquid manure channelling. It offers the example of a 1000-sow farrowing and gestation house with all equipment. Completion time: 25 weeks. Price: "around $2,900 Cdn per sow." This standard farm building concept, with or without pre-fabrication, is being hailed by agriculture advisers throughout Scandinavia as an innovation, which will probably change the face of the entire countryside within a few decades. "For generations, most farms have kept the same range of buildings, renovating the insides now and again and adding on to allow for new housing ideas, such as free stalls and parlour," recalls one building specialist. "Advisers have long searched for a cheap way to introduce modern cost-efficient buildings with more air, light and labour ease." Interestingly, a similar trend is being urged on hog feeders across the North Sea in Britain. Here, the pressure is being applied by the country's largest meat processing organization, Grampian Country Foods. This company offers certain hog feeding contracts to farmers only if they build a standardized feeding house that includes straw bedding and natural ventilation.
Come to think of it, the world's largest milk processing co-operative, the Swedish based Arla Foods, was also involved in the design of the standardized Swedish dairy buildings mentioned above. Perhaps it will be similar pressures from food processors and consumers that will really fuel the new trend to standardized farm buildings across northern Europe. BF Norman Dunn writes about European agriculture from Germany.
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