Most agricultural companies are deeply loyal to their home regions. Large agricultural enterprises and small farmers alike know the people who live next to their fields and stables. This is a priceless benefit when selling products in farm shops or small, local chain stores. It becomes even more interesting when different traders and producers of a region join forces and try to persuade people to spend more money on local produce than on imported goods. A good example for this is a regional currency.
Jan Berger
| 2010-07-28
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Migrant workers are often employed to help with harvesting apples.
Success with guests
Migrant workers are an essential help for fruit farmers, wine makers and with the strawberry and cucumber harvest. What do farmers have to look out for when employing migrant workers? One thing is for sure – finding British harvest helpers is not an easy task. Most of the British applicants don’t get any further than the first interview.
Jan Berger
| 2010-07-22
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Water buffalo breeder Peter Biel with some of his animals.
Landscaping and gourmet products
They turn a head or two when you see them on a field. No you are not looking at an ordinary cow, but at a burly, shaggy animal with huge horns. After being introduced to Germany over ten years ago, water buffalo are still an unusual sight and quite an attraction. The breeders, though, are not after a show effect, they are more interested in the special characteristics of the “bubalus bubalis”, an animal that cannot be cross bred with cows. The buffalo haven’t got anything in common with Bison.
Karsten Busch
| 2010-07-15
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gruuna employee Gerrit Fiedler (left) explains the online agricultural market place to interested parties.
Marketing
In our blog we have already emphasised how gruuna is being introduced at customer events. In this way, farmers, directors of agricultural companies and also other interested parties like machinery dealers have received a lot of information about the online agricultural market place.
Jan Berger
| 2010-07-12
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Harald Herrmann
Questions about gruuna - part 1
Harald Herrmann is mainly responsible for all basic legal matters at gruuna. Whenever we show gruuna to farmers or traders, there is a lot of praise for the user-friendly concept and the well-structured lay-out of the website. But there are also a lot of discussions after each presentation – mostly about difficulties customers feel they may experience while trading on gruuna. There are already answers to most questions in this section of our homepage. In this series we will look more closely at a few issues that are very important to you and explain them in detail. This first part is about describing your items.
Jan Berger
| 2010-07-05
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Christian Hiß
Regional values
Near Freiberg in Germany we found an interesting mix of business, sustainability and focus on the future. Four years ago farmer Christian Hiß founded the Regionalwert AG (Regionalwert plc) there. With assets from the plc he buys agricultural businesses with no family successors and leases them to qualified organic farmers. His concept impresses many investors.
Jan Berger
| 2010-06-29
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A milk vending machine. picture: Risto GbR
Producers offer self-service
Many farmers are thinking about how to make their direct sales to the customer easier and better.
Large agricultural cooperatives and small farmers alike do not want to be dependent on wholesalers – they prefer to make decisions about prices of their products themselves. More companies are selling their products direct “from the farm” – in farm shops, in cooperation with local shops or at markets in the region. And a by-product is the vending machine. Why is that?
Jan Berger
| 2010-06-24
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The EU organic logo. picture: European Union
EU-guideline
What producers in Europe already know will be made known to consumers by July. The new EU logo for organic products. The logo was shown for the first time on February 8, 2010 after an online vote was cast. From July 1, it will be compulsory to mark all packaged organic products, which are produced in the European Union, with this new label. For imported products, using the new logo is optional. Apart from a second new optional label „not genetically modified“ it will be the only state-approved seal of quality for food.
Magdalena Dechnik
| 2010-06-08
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Bartosz Woźniak
Agriculture at the borders of Germany
The term „breeding farm” reminds most people of a traditional farm where cows and pigs are bred. But there are more and more farms making use of a niche market and concentrating on breeding exotic animals such as bison, alpaca, crosses between house pigs and wild boars or even reindeer.
In Poland a farm in Czelin breeds fallow deer and reindeer. gruuna spoke to farmer Bartosz Woźniak about his special type of business, using the internet and what the European Union means to him.
Magdalena Dechnik
| 2010-06-03
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From publican son to bison whisperer
Frank Selka has run his Buffalo Ranch in Neukieritzsch, near Leipzig for 11 years now. He started with 20 imported animals on a 30-hectare area of regenerated open-cast mining land.
Today, 200 female animals with their calves are grazing on more than 200 hectares of land. One hundred bisons per year are slaughtered and taken apart in Frank Selka’s own company. The meat and sausages are then sold in the ranch’s farm shop, to gastronomy and to wholesalers. In addition, Selka sells living animals, skins, skulls and mounted specimens. Together with his Belgian business partner he has got 600 female animals and this is quite a size for the European bison market.
Georg Drabner
| 2010-05-13
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