Visiting German farmer: death stereotype Bashny.Net

Official media somehow rarely raise the issue of how to live and work abroad, the local inhabitants, for example, the same farmers. If you write something, as a rule, that foreign farmers working solely on the basis of the latest achievements of science and technology, and because of this - lead prosperous lives, improving their rich inner world and so on. The author of these lines, until recently, thought so, too. Not yet visited a German farm in northern Germany ...

My friend Gerhard lives in Friesland, in the vicinity of a small town in the vicinity of the North Sea. Not long ago I visited him. Over a glass of schnapps host talking about their neighbors - where they work, how they spend their free time together.

 - Near AM family lives, they have a big farm: four cows, two hundred sheep.

 - It has long dreamed of seeing the typical German farm - I just caught fire. - Could you ask your friends to show how being their economy?

 - I'll try, - said evasively Gerhard. - Actually, they are not very fond of idle visitors ...

A few days later a friend of mine said that M. invite us to visit. In the fixed time we drove to our destination. The day was hot, and not to include air conditioning, Gerhard opened the window of his Audi.

The colorful group of brick buildings had to drive a few hundred meters when the cabin began, as they say, to gain strength odor. At the site happened to be sure: manure smelled strongly. In the center of the service yard stood a bunch of five-meter effective organic fertilizer. Looking ahead, I note that all the buildings, including the house, firmly smelling manure. The stereotype of the neat and tidy German farm given first crack.

Met. Family M. consisting of the heads of the enterprise, his wife, and three children: the older adult, a student of class 8 young sons and daughters of eighteen. Once I asked how many people work at the plant.

 - We have been working - with some surprise said the head of the family. - Only the daughter is not involved in the case, she got a job in the city.

 - It is clear, well salaried workers, many of them here?

 - No one, but we ...

The stereotype of the bulge at the seams. But I thought: perhaps some people may everyday life is impossibly high number of cattle and small cattle, but thanks to modern technology. Automation, computer programs, smart car and so on

The reality, they say, killed on the spot. In addition to the milking machine and the forks and shovels, no other equipment was not in sight. Only manual labor, and no helpers from.

 - Cows have two hundred, - said M. - Eat all constantly throughout the day, feeders should always be full. Milking - twice a day. Every cow should be put out of its sector, put into a special hole, after milking take place. During that time, should have time to scrape manure hose to wash the floor. I worked on this and sons. His wife takes care of the sheep.

In order to have time to do it all, family members get up at 6 o'clock in the morning, and the last cow milking finish at 10pm.

The huge barn has been blocked by the sector in the old half-rotten planks, thickly smeared with manure, as well as ancient floors under several hundreds of cows. I looked at it all and wondered where these people take so much effort and nerves for this frantic daily work? And is it true that the farm is typical for Germany is no exception whether it is the general rules?

 - In principle, all the colleagues with whom I am familiar, are about the same things. Well, someone has no sheep or just steers fattened for meat, milk is not engaged. We had previously held several hundred chickens, but then abandoned it when his daughter began to work in the city. But not to lose old customers, they sell the eggs, which are purchased from neighboring farmers.

In general, since. Something in detail, M. sell to local residents, with this tax is not paid, and the rest of the milk and meat wholesalers pass. Comes machine, everything is loaded and taken away for recycling. No need to look for someone to sell the goods, it is engaged in management of associations of farmers. It also delivers pellets - the only food the animals all his life kept in the shed and never withdrawn graze on the grass. Management determines which of the farmers keep any animals, the number of goals, and establishes standards of delivery of the goods. No need to worry about this. Just work, work and work again.

So, perhaps, it brings the family a lot of money? No, their incomes are comparable to the average salary in Germany. That is, the farmer gets about as much as, for example, the hairdresser, the seller or anyone else in the neighboring town for the eight-hour day. But M. can not change the profession, he did not even apartments, in addition to this farm, built by the ancestors of two hundred years ago, and credits that you need to pay all the time, otherwise you lose the farm. And you can not sell it without the permission of the board of association of farmers, and there is no one to redeem it. No company is willing to acquire in order to work hard on it from dawn to dusk seven days a week and holidays ...

 - A few years ago, we have earned a good idea, - says M. - Milk and meat were in the price. And then, when the European Union adopted new eastern countries, they have entered the market and have brought down prices below the lower limit. Their businesses easier: you can easily evade taxes and to recruit without registration. We this is impossible if you take the employee, you must assign it to pay the average for the industry to pay for his taxes, insurance.

Said goodbye to Moscow, we got a cozy, neat, nice house, which smelled of flowers, coffee and vanilla scones, baked on the eve of his spouse Gerhard. And there, on the farm, continued eternal struggle for survival, in which the rate was, if not life, then certainly the material well-being of all family members. In my opinion, it can be called a kind of feat, but not the job of the dream.

By the way, in Russia five-meter multi-ton pile of manure can be sold for good money, the same vacationers disassemble in no time. In Germany, this fertilizer completely claimed, from the farms it is simply taken to a special landfill sites, and to take no for free. This here is a small clarification about the features of growing German producers of those fruits and vegetables that are strewn including Russian stores.

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I can only add that, despite the private ownership of land, can only sell it to the state or the farmers' union. Lay a loan very limited number of banks and buy back the land from the bank, with no repayment of the loan, again Farmers Union or the state. Transfer of agricultural land for development is also very hard. Somewhere there is a post on Yap that they could not carry out the road to the town in the German outback short way just because she had to take place on agricultural land and forest.

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