Young EU farmers consider options
More than 300 young European farmers gathered for a young farmer’s event at Agritechnica tonight in Hannover, Germany. They listened to presentations from producers who have moved to other parts of the world to farm.
One of the presenters was Christoph Rosnack who came from Austria and bought a farm north of Estevan, Saskatchewan a couple years ago. He’s developing an organic grain farm on about 1,300 hectares.
While 2010 was a reasonable year for him, 2011 was a washout. Still, he remains optimistic and happy with his decision to move to Canada.
Quite a different story came from Stefan Duerr, who grew up on a small farm in Germany. He was the first farmer from Germany to move to Russia when it opened up in 1989. Today, his company has 170,000 hectares and tens of thousands of dairy cows in a number of operations across the country. His goal is 300,000 hectares and 25,000 dairy cows by 2015.
There were great questions by the young people for all the panel participants. However, there seemed to be more interest in coming to Canada or Australia to develop a family farm than seeking fortune in a Russian mega farm.
I’m Kevin Hursh.