Organic farms wanted by Berchtesgadener Land
The Berchtesgadener Land dairy in Germany has achieved its 2020 goal of gaining 20 new demeter farms for the co-operative. But the search for farmers who want to convert their farms to biodynamic agriculture is far from over. The dairy is looking for more and wants to continue collecting from demeter milk farms.
Organic has long outgrown the niche. This is shown by the increasing range of organic products in conventional retail and discounters. The purchase of organic products in all consumer groups continues to increase, according to GfK ConsumerPanel. The demand for organic dairy products is also increasing for Berchtesgadener Land. It currently collects and processes around 100 million kg of organic milk annually from almost 600 organic farms along the Alpine ridge between Salzach and Mangfall.
For some time now, fresh demeter milk has benefited particularly strongly from the demand for organic products. Florian Zielinski, responsible for organic sales at the dairy, sees several reasons for this: “The product covers many trends. On the one hand, there is the glass packaging, which corresponds to the no-plastic trend, and then the special gentle processing without homogenisation and, of course, bio-dynamic agriculture with the special demeter milk quality. The coronavirus could not stop the increasing demand.”
Demeter milk is still only available to a limited extent. A year ago Berchtesgadener Land announced the goal of “20 in 2020”, to acquire 20 new demeter businesses during the year.
Together with the Demeter Association, it actively recruited additional farms, and at the beginning of the year, raised the demeter surcharge by another 0.5 cents to 2 cents per kilogram of milk.
The first farms, which have switched from organic to the demeter standard have already been recorded. In total, the dairy was actually able to include 20 farms willing to convert to join the co-operative.
