Food for Thought

A dear "old" friend , almost exactly the same age as my son, who I first met when she was 11, recently posted something worth repeating:

"In life you will at some point need a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman and a vicar. But three times a day you need a farmer."

Dani (ella), middle of three children, came from a farming family but at first seemed destined to follow a different path. However suddenly she was married to a young farmer and has two lovely daughters. They have a modern dairy and arable farm near Landsberg am Lech, just south of Munich and are currently looking for an apprentice to start in August - As it's an official position with school days, you do need to have reasonable German language skills.

Dog walk in Erkheim, no real sign of a potential Blip but on the way home took a detour past a farm where I hoped something may come by. The farm belongs to our counties farmers representative. It's the farm where Farmer Franz's son, Markus did his apprenticeship and is of a similar age to Dani and like many of his friends, going through the "crisis" of whether or not to stay in farming.

On the wall of a barn was the Bliped poster which I had never seen before and coincidentally this evening got the local free newspaper out of the postbox only to see as the headline, the almost identical photo showing the farmer presenting the Farmers Union's newest banner to the press.

Basically it is giving us some idea of how much the farmers get on certain foodstuffs - 2 cents on a pint of beer or a potato, 7 cents on a glass of milk etc etc. If you simply work out how much time and equipment is needed to harvest 50kg of grass (a days portion) of grass and feed it to a cow, plus the daily corn/manufactured feed and if you are lucky, to get 5o litres of milk, you will see how ridiculous the "reward" is.

No wonder the farming community is under pressure. If we want to maintain our countryside for our own recreational purposes, eat healthy food from well kept animals on environmentally worked land, then we have to pay the price. And a huge factor seldom considered, is the vital role our youth in farming play in our society's structure and what will happen if this breaks down. Take a traditional small farm here - it can support three generations from cradle to grave, maintaining a high level of family units with little cost to our welfare state for things like old age care and these families are often the backbone of our rural villages.

Just like the current arguments about dumping prices for steel and the dreadful effects on whole communities social well being, we need to consider our thoughts on globalisation.

PS the young Bavarian lad is from a somewhat older Farmers Union campaign. The last campaign about 5 years ago asked for 40 cents a litre to be paid to the farmers for milk - they currently get 29 cents.