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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Marc-Wilhelm Kohfink Foto: privat
The Berlin-based beekeeper Marc-Wilhelm Kohfink has been running the Imkerblog for four years now. We spoke to him about blogging, social media marketing and the potential target groups farmers could reach with it online.
Jan Berger
| 2010-04-13
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Regional products are your trump cards. If your products are from a well-known region you can market them better and they also obtain higher profits. But if you have made a name for yourself nationally or even internationally there will also be a lot of people copying your idea to cash in. They then ruin the prices with bad quality products. A registered trade mark can protect you from this. When it comes to farm produce you don’t have to wait long for regulations from the EU. In Brussels they even have created three logos for protected product names. But how are products like Altenburger goats cheese, Thuringian bratwurst and Spreewald gerkins protected and what requirements do the products have to fulfil?
Georg Drabner
| 2010-04-09
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It is easier to sell a product, if you show potential customers how you make it.
Car manufacturers that operate in see-through buildings, tours around large companies and open days in kitchens and bakeries show a trend towards transparent manufacturing.
How can farmers profit, get more customers and by doing so increase their direct sales? Apart from a farm shop or an open day you can show your customers how the products are made and sell them directly afterwards. One good example is cheese-making demonstrations.
Jan Berger
| 2010-04-06
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Online
Even cow dung is a money-maker on the internet! In Europe, farmers mostly use their cow dung as fertilizer or in biogas plants. But a French farmer has found an entirely different way of recycling it. He sells dung in his own online shop.
Jan Berger
| 2010-03-22
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Agricultural niche markets are not easily found. Innovation is not asked for due to tradition established over centuries.
But sometimes new markets open due to unpredicted consumer demands. At the moment the best example is the biggest goat farm in Europe.
Dairy company Petri from Heidbrink is planning a mega project – the biggest goat farm in Europe will soon open. No less than 8000 goats are on hand to produce the milk needed to meet the relatively new demand in goat’s milk in Germany.
Michael Franz
| 2010-03-08
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Winter
In the bleak mid/winter, vehicles often end up in snow drifts – unable to move again without help. Farmers are often asked for help, to tow the vehicle out again with one of their machines. But that can get very expensive.
Sebastian Mahler
| 2010-03-03
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"Swiss Meat"
Selling products of very high quality and price can create problems for farmers due to the vulnerability of changes in the market.
The problem is made worse when someone sells a similar product at a lower price – even if the quality is inferior to yours. The availability of lower prices often affects the choices customers make.
The question then is how to tell a customer that your product is the one to buy even at a higher price.
Michael Franz
| 2010-01-20
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Not often have we seen a farmer make an impression in the media but recently Mathias von Mirbach from Schleswig-Holstein did just that – thanks to a financial investment brainwave.
The organic farmer found himself needing €20,000 for his rented 150-hectar farm so he could buy cows from his partner who was leaving. No bank wanted to give him a loan because he did have enough security and all hope seemed lost.
Michael Franz
| 2010-01-19
| Erfolgsgeschichten, Konzepte
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You all know the agricultural Proceeds Law, also known as the Minimum Law.
In the middle of the 19th century, famous German agricultural scientist and analytic chemist Justus von Liebig said the proceeds from a crop could only be as high as the missing nutrient allowed.
So the success of your yield was affected by the one thing that was lacking – for instance sun, water or fertiliser. The weakest link in a chain was holding back progress.
Michael Franz
| 2010-01-18
| Konzepte
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