Letter From Europe

Letter from Europe: A Bavarian breeder’s quest for beef tenderness

An outspoken critic of European beef quality, this Angus cattle breeder is using DNA testing, among other tools, to guarantee quality and tenderness for his customers

by NORMAN DUNN

The European cattle market is finding that a tough reputation is hard to live down. Now, pioneering breeders want to guarantee tenderness to get steaks on the best-seller list.
Beef has always been second best among the red meats on the European mainland. In 2006, average per capita pork consumption in the 25 countries of the European Union was 42.5 kilograms, while beef managed just over 17 kilos.

Letter From Europe: Robots, electric drive power and mechanical weed control start to come into favour

One of Europe’s top agricultural engineering researchers predicts a farming future with soil protection laws, robots that recognize and eliminate weeds and electric drive instead of pto power for farm machinery.

by NORMAN DUNN

Prof. Karlheinz Köller, a precision farming expert from Stuttgart’s Hohenheim University, is convinced that the most important challenge facing farmers is the protection of soil and water, while still producing as much food as possible.

“In fact,” he told an international gathering of farmers this November in Germany, “water is actually disappearing faster than our mineral oil reserves at the moment. We are also losing farming land at alarming rates in some countries.”

Letter From Europe: French cropland rents remain stable, while England’s bust the bank

The rush for more land is pushing up rents in free-market England, while in France’s more regulated environment, tenants are paying substantially less

by NORMAN DUNN

Soaring grain prices, which as we all now know have less to do with ethanol demand and much more with dramatically reduced wheat and barley reserve stocks the world over, have sharpened the appetites of grain growers for renting more land this fall.

Letter From Europe: The law that changed the German countryside

Biogas production from corn, grass and cereal wholecrop harvests swallowed up over 800,000 acres of this country’s farmland this year – and income from biogas electricity was beating earnings from milk production

by NORMAN DUNN

Only a year or two ago seeing a farmyard biogas production plant when driving through
the German countryside was so unusual that it called for a stop and a chat with the farmer if he happened to be around. Most were on cattle and pig farms at that time. Fermenting the manure and collecting the produced methane for running a gas motor
and generator was providing electric current for the farmhouse and farm buildings. Then came an innovative renewable energy law from Berlin that promised farmers a fair price if the biogas electricity was fed straight into the mains network – actually a tick more per kilowatt than the price householders had to pay for their current. This triggered a revolution on the land. By last year there were some 3,500 biogas plants producing a total 5 billion kiloWatt (kWh) hours. And a 30 per cent output expansion is expected for 2007!