From Farm to Table

I apologize for the delay. The wifi situation is not the greatest over here so I am a few posts behind on blogs. But without further ado, here is the next one.

Today was our one and only day in the Munsterland area of Germany and a day that didn’t look to full on the agenda, but it sure turned out to be a jam packed full of German ag experiences. We started our day on a German grain and livestock farm and finished the day at one of the largest slaughter plants in all of Europe and almost ended up setting up two of the Fellows with future husbands. I say that is a pretty good day.

We started our day out heading to a family farm east of Munster farms corn and raises pigs. As we arrived on the farm they were finishing up harvesting a field of grain corn. Until now, all of the corn has been harvested for silage which would end up in a cow’s belly or used in the production of biogas. Here, the farm harvested corn grain and ran it through a grinder in the field to be hauled into a pit for storage.

On the livestock side of the operation, there are 4000 head of feeder pigs and 65 bulls (again with the mind blown, but smaller explosion). The pigs are divided into three different houses where they are brought in at 28kg and feed them out until they reach 150kg. It takes about 4 months to grow them to that size, which is you do some back of the napkin math means they run about 12,000 pigs through their doors every year! As we toured through the barns looking at the future bacon, we learned that they had given the pigs 20% more room than the law requires. No wonder they looked so happy!

Another interesting thing we learned was the farm actually operated under five different farms to get around some of the mandates they would be required to meet due to their size.

After the farm, we headed to Europe’s largest pork slaughterhouse, Tonnies. When we arrived the facility was very large and later found out they they employ 5500 people. On top of the very large facility, there was a restaurant for the public, a store where you can shop for everything you could need for a BBQ (minus the beer), and a football (soccer) stadium for a professional team. Yes, you read that correctly. A soccer stadium. Even minus the soccer stadium, these two additions were new to us, but a nice touch to tie the consumer with the root of their product.

During lunch we had a traditional German dish of pork knuckle, which was amazing. At this time, we discussed the numbers of the plant, how many animals it processes, what it process and some of the inner workings. We also had some very good discussions on animal welfare and how it is a big focus on how they can improve it for their animals. One very interesting part of that topic was Dr. Jorg Altemeier will be bringing in Dr. Temple Grandin from Colorado State University, this Fellow’s alma matter, to look over the animal holding area to give input on what they are doing.

After lunch we took a tour of the company. In the uilding they provide care for children, which they say is severely lacking, as well as a well furnished exercise gym and relaxation area. Pretty fantastic benefits. We then suited up and headed into the slaughterhouse to see the processing system with our guide Jorg Eynck to tell us what was happening along the way. Afterwards we had a good discussion on the tracking of the processed animal. In Germany, they have the ability to track where the animal was processed, grown and born if there is ever a problem with the product. The providing of a specific farm location for where the piglet is born and the pig is raised is something we don’t do and something most producers worry about happening due to privacy concerns, which our new Germany friends say that this type of privacy isn’t something they or the farmers would have to worry about.

We then returned to Munster. While our host dealt with the care, the Fellows went to see the shopping seen of Munster. As we walked around, we wished that we could have spent some more time in this charming town. We then met our host, Jorn, for dinner and had some very fun discussions about a variety of ag policy and our farm organizations. While our time in Munster was short, it was long on fun.

Nick