How a dairy raises prices and is still successful
Janosch Raymann is the managing director of the Hamfelder Hof farm dairy. The company recently increased the milk price in favor of its suppliers, the organic farms
Source: Bertold Fabricius
Solidarity agriculture, cooperatives, direct marketing: there are now a variety of new networks that connect consumers and producers directly. Solidarity also withstands higher prices in highly competitive markets.
Whe member of the Kattendorfer Hof’s “Solidarity Farming” wants to know where the food comes from and how it is produced. A regular harvest portion costs 222 euros per month. In return, members receive potatoes and other crops, vegetables, beef, pork and dairy products fresh from the fields and stables in Kattendorf near Kaltenkirchen and from the sister farm in Neverstaven. Among other things, there are also half harvest portions or those without meat or without dairy products.
Since the mid-1990s, the Kattendorfer Hof has been producing according to Demeter standards, the oldest form of biodynamic farming in Germany, invented by Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophic teaching. The solidary agriculture of the Kattendorfer currently has around 1000 members, according to its own account it is the largest in Germany.
This includes twelve collection points for groceries in the metropolitan region of Hamburg that are managed by the members themselves, the so-called food coops, as well as six farm-owned shops, four of which are in Hamburg. Another food coop in the Hanseatic city is scheduled to open in June in a new cooperative settlement in the Pergolenviertel next to City Nord. “The number of solidarity farming communities continues to grow strongly nationwide, but predominantly in the supply of vegetables, not really for farms,” says Bernhard Weßling, co-owner and managing director of Kattendorfer Hof GmbH & Co. KG.
In northern Germany, the Kattendorfer were pioneers in the networking of producers and consumers. The members of Solidarity Agriculture share the economic risk of the farm. Essentially, what is delivered is what comes from the field and from the barn – if it is less than in the comparable periods due to the weather or for other reasons, the quantities in the “harvest shares” that are delivered to the food coops are correspondingly lower. The farm shops also serve as collection points, but they are also open to non-members and they also market organic products that do not come from the Kattendorfer Hof itself. Otherwise they would not be economically viable.
The “Solawi,” as it’s called by its members, is just one form of bringing farmers and consumers closer together. Agricultural businesses as well as private households and other consumers are involved in the Horst dairy cooperative near Elmshorn. The small dairy, which sees itself as “the last of its kind” in the north, processes milk from conventional and organic farms in separate product lines. In regional trade – from organic shops to supermarkets – there is milk, butter, yoghurt, quark and crème fraîche from Horst. The dairy wants to support a diverse, regional dairy industry.
The Hamfelder Hof farm dairy to the east of Hamburg also has this goal. Their nucleus, the Hamfelder Hof, was converted to organic farming in the 1980s. The Hamfelders later built up a producer association with other farms and eventually their own dairy. Today it is supplied with milk by 38 organic farms, and further partner companies are to be added.
“Our goal is to achieve 70 cents per liter of raw milk”
Last autumn, the dairy increased the final price for its milk by 20 cents per liter. This is a daring step in the highly competitive market for dairy products – the Hamfelders are using it to aggressively advertise to their customers directly on the milk cartons. The surcharge goes directly to the farmer: “We currently pay the partner farms of our dairy 68.6 cents per liter of raw milk including a seasonal surcharge of 2.5 cents,” says Janosch Raymann, managing director of the Hamfelder Hof farm dairy and co-owner of the Hamfelder Hof. “Our goal is to achieve 70 cents per liter of raw milk.”
Conventional farms in Germany currently get an average of around 40 cents per liter of milk – and even this recently increased price is unlikely to cover the costs of many farmers. So far, from Raymann’s point of view, everything indicates that customers are going along with the price increase – for a product that is in the refrigerated counters of the supermarkets alongside a number of other milk offers: “Overall, we can say that we have not lost any sales and that we received a lot of tailwind for the implementation of our goals on the farms.”