Climate is Changing – How Are German Scientists Working with Farmers to Find a Way Forward?

On 12 June, at Gut Wilmersdorf, an organic farm an hour’s drive from Berlin, a group of young agricultural students and their lecturer were leading farmers and scientists around the trial plots.

The occasion was the annual trial plot open day at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE). Here, scientists must put aside the academic jargon and let the actual field results speak for themselves, helping farmers to optimise their farm management and better cope with risks. For over a decade now, no challenge has weighed more heavily on German agriculture than climate change.

In early June, heavy rain had triggered flooding in the southern regions of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. Brandenburg, where the farm is located, would normally be well into summer by now, but this year had brought unseasonable cold, with daytime highs barely reaching 20 degrees and occasional gusts and showers rolling in. People instinctively pulled their jackets tighter, and amid the unmistakably abnormal weather, listened as German farmers and scientists explored the way forward for climate adaptation in agriculture.

I. Summer Crops or Winter Crops?

As Germany’s driest region, Brandenburg is particularly exposed to the impacts of climate change. Local rainfall is 30% below the national average, at just 557 mm, and the trend towards warming and drying is worsening summer droughts, severely affecting crop growth.

New opportunities are emerging, too. With winters growing steadily warmer and wetter, HNEE scientists have introduced chickpeas, soya beans, broad beans and other legume crops into the trial plots. If these can survive the winter, the next step will be to select and breed more cold-tolerant varieties.

To maximise the benefits and mitigate the risks, farmers need to grow more winter crops. Choosing the right crops for one’s own farm and adjusting the cropping structure is precisely the discussion this open day hopes to spark.

“Let me quiz you all – which crop tends to attract the most corn poppies in its field? Does anyone know which rotation pairs best with broad beans?” Professor Knut Schmidtke, a crop rotation expert, livened up the atmosphere with a few lighthearted questions. Holding crops he had just pulled from the trial plots, he vividly shared his latest research findings with the farmers and fellow researchers in attendance.

Crop rotation – the practice of growing different crops in succession on the same plot, much like the rice–wheat/rapeseed flooded-and-dry rotation common across China’s Jiangnan region – is a key tool. Carefully sequencing the rotation not only replenishes soil fertility but also suppresses weeds, which is especially important for large-scale organic production.

In the rotation systems common in the Brandenburg region, the broad bean has traditionally been a summer crop, sown in spring and harvested in autumn. Yet recent field research has shown that broad beans can overwinter here, and their vigorous root systems draw moisture effectively from the soil, yielding more than expected.

Professor Schmidtke therefore recommends shifting broad beans to a winter crop, and gradually transitioning the local rotation from the conventional three-summer-two-winter pattern to a three-winter-two-summer one – three winter crops interspersed with two summer crops – to better adapt to climate change.

Beyond broad beans, the trial plots are also testing the adaptability of lupin, chickpea and soya bean varieties as winter crops. These legumes not only hold climate-adaptation potential but, as nitrogen-fixing crops or green manure, can improve soil quality within organic farming systems. They also stand to ride the wave of growing vegetarian consumption in Germany.

As plant-based eating gains wider acceptance, half of all Germans now say they wish to reduce their meat intake, and the vegetarian population has grown rapidly from 100,000 in 2012 to 1.5 million in 2022.

Although cooking beans and pulses directly is quite limited in traditional German cuisine, they can be turned into plant-based processed products. Over the past year, HNEE students have compared the protein content of four soya bean varieties in the trial plots – the higher the protein content, the better suited to processing and the easier it is to connect with the vegetarian market.

Changing tack and increasing winter sowing has become something of a consensus. Yet what new challenges does winter sowing bring? Among these overwintering crops, which varieties are the most cold-tolerant? Will local varieties adapt better? How effective is mixed sowing, as practised in upland areas?… Scientists and farmers plunged into a lively discussion, while we briefly left the trial plots to tour Gut Wilmersdorf farm.

II. Sharing the Land: An Organic Farm Within a Nature Reserve

“Over there – the side with the wind turbines is beyond the reserve boundary.”

Agricultural biodiversity expert Rudi Vogel, head of the non-profit Vern, pointed towards the enormous blades turning slowly in the distance and showed us the way. This was the Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve, part of the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme.

Founded in the year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Schorfheide-Chorin is what Rudi calls “a stroke of historical luck”. The Man and the Biosphere Programme seeks a balance between conservation and use; nearly 80% of the reserve’s area is open to sustainable use. In the 1990s, for instance, 30% of the arable land within the reserve was converted to organic farming – most of it formerly state collective farms from the era of the German Democratic Republic.

Rudi himself moved here during that era of upheaval. While working in government, he was involved in privatising the collective farms within the reserve. The farm where we now stood once covered over 2,000 hectares (more than 30,000 mu), combining arable and livestock production, with the old dairy barns built right at the entrance.

After privatisation, unable to shoulder the high capital costs and short of skilled labour, the livestock operation was gradually phased out. Of the land, 1,100 hectares (about 16,500 mu) became an organic grain farm – the Gut Wilmersdorf of today.

“As an organic farm without integrated livestock and crop production, our challenge is ensuring a long-term supply of nutrients in the soil.” That is a line from the farm’s own website. In recent years, the annual mean temperature across northern Germany has risen from 8.3°C to 9.5°C, further sharpening Gut Wilmersdorf’s sense of urgency.

In 2005, the farm formally partnered with HNEE, setting aside six 0.46-hectare rotation plots as university trial fields, hoping to serve as a bridge between organic farming education, research and practice. In 2009, Gut Wilmersdorf also joined the action research programme under the German Climate Change Adaptation Strategy and the regional climate adaptation network, exploring the possibility of direct drilling oats into cover crops to combat drought.

It is worth noting that the aim of action research is not to find a one-size-fits-all climate adaptation solution, but to cultivate farmers’ own adaptive capacity, strengthen regional networks, draw in more farmers, and develop adaptation measures tailored to the scale of individual farms (farm-specific). The annual trial plot open day, meanwhile, has become the network’s best opportunity to recruit new members.

At this open day, we met Fabian, a 34-year-old organic farmer who had come, drawn by the reputation of the event. He lives in the Potsdam area, less than a two-hour drive away. Three years ago, Fabian took over Gut Kienberg, his father-in-law’s 1,000-hectare (15,000 mu) farm, where he mainly grows organic rye, oats and other cereals.

Fabian wanted to learn not only about climate adaptation but also to expand his horizons on the market side, because bulk cereals can only be sold to organic wholesalers and supermarkets, leaving extremely thin profit margins. At present, the farm’s operations still need to be topped up by other income sources; the only way forward is to connect directly with consumers.

To that end, the farm also keeps fifteen head of beef cattle of a local breed raised free-range, rears chickens in mobile poultry housing, and has set aside small vegetable plots. Once a week, it delivers vegetables, eggs and beef to consumers in Berlin.

But the market has been sluggish these past two years. “When things are quiet, a week’s worth of home-delivery boxes earns no more than €300 or €400 (under 3,000 yuan), barely worth the round trip. It’s nothing like the pandemic years, when everyone was happy to pay for quality food,” Fabian said. Yet he still seemed remarkably optimistic. And we believed, too, that young farmers like him – well educated and open-minded – will always find a way through.

III. Where Does Agricultural Talent Come From?

While no shortage of young people wish to return to the land, the persistent decline in Germany’s agricultural workforce is undeniable. Over the past two decades, the number of full-time farmers in Germany has fallen by 160,000. Brandenburg, where Gut Wilmersdorf is located, was once part of the German Democratic Republic. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, residents of the former East Germany left in large numbers, with rural areas suffering the worst depopulation and hollowing out.

No wonder the open day featured a specially showcased AI weeding robot developed for organic sugar beet. Ralph Bloch, HNEE professor and head of the trial plots, told us that organic beet sugar is a scarce commodity in Germany’s organic market, because weeding beet is labour-intensive. Labour shortages and high hiring costs have been steadily reducing the local supply of organic sugar beet, which prompted the effort to develop a weeding robot specifically for beet.

In the end, we never got to see the robot in action. On the eve of the open day, it had been rendered inoperable by a software update glitch. Ralph was candid: the robot weeded too slowly, struggled in the rain, and was expensive to build… plenty of problems still need solving. I suspect what he really meant was that the foundation of sustainable agriculture remains the cultivation of people.

For various historical reasons, family-run farms are rare in Brandenburg and there is no tradition of the son following in his father’s footsteps, so young blood is urgently needed. Two days later, we visited the HNEE campus to see how this university of just 2,300 students is devoting itself to nurturing talent for organic agriculture.

As an applied science and technology university, HNEE bypasses the conventional model of knowledge production, closely integrating teaching with organic farming practice and co-creating knowledge with producers. Beyond the collaboration with the farm’s trial plots, students in the Department of Organic Agriculture must complete internships at organic farms or companies, ranging from twelve to twenty weeks. Each year, the summer school also invites farmers to give lectures, bringing news straight from the fields.

Sustainability runs through every corner of campus life, beyond the classroom: the university canteen serves organic rice exclusively, and the school also maintains close links with nearby organic supermarkets, organic bakeries and other enterprises. Here, organic and sustainable principles are a thread that runs through everything. Ralph proudly declared: “Enrolment is falling at every university in Germany – only our student numbers are steadily growing.” After graduation, these students will become professional talent in Germany’s organic agriculture sector – on the one hand, helping research better serve farmers; on the other, applying the latest scientific findings to their own farms. Is this virtuous cycle of technology and practice, this people-centred innovation rooted in place, not exactly what we need most today?

Foodthink Author

zeen

Foodthink editor, whose trip to Germany sparked a new dream: setting up a stall selling liangpi (cold rice noodle rolls) for €10 a plate.

 

 

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Sino-German Agricultural Centre for its bilateral exchange programme on “Agricultural Biodiversity in Response to Climate Change”. Follow the Sino-German Agricultural Centre, the Farmers’ Seed Network and Foodthink for updates on the programme’s outputs.

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs in this article were taken by HNEE

Editor: Tianle