Students:Day Four - nature conservation & sustainable agriculture

Today was the earliest start of any day in the week, as we had to get to Schneverdingen by 9am to visit the Alfred Toepfer Academy for Nature Conservation for a talk with the academy director, Susanne Eilers, about the education programme operated by the academy. Most interesting was the use of role plays and games used by the Academy to teach the importance of sustainability, particularly the fish game devised by Meadows - the famous of author of Limits to Growth (see the resources on the main wiki page for a link to this game).

The next stop was at "Lueneburger Heide" or Lueneburg Heath for a guided walk with heath ranger, Jan Brockmann. Jan explained the history of the heath and how it had been turned from thick forest into heath land in the first millenium by new immigrants, left to afforest again after the soil fertility gave out, and then repopulated in the Middle Ages and turned into heath again by the felling once more of the regrown forests for use as fuel. As the soil was of poor quality, however, the farmers developed a system of herding sheep for their manure and using the dung to fertilise a small area of land for food crops. Life was hard but manageable, but became less so with the first stage of globalisation in the 19th century following the industrial revolution when cheap imports of merino wool from New Zealand undercut the wool produced in the heath, and imported sugarcane destroyed the local honey industry. The heath became quickly depopulated as a result, but the farming practices are maintained to this day, i.e. sheep herding, to ensure the heath remains in its current state.

Students indulged in an organic lunch at the Baukhof farm in Amelinghausen afterwards, followed by a tour of the 'Demeter' organic farm system of Baukhof by Ralf Weber. Ralf talked about the farm's beginnings in the 1920s as a family farm and how it developed since then to become more of a cooperative farm, which among other things helps to ensure that the farm remains viable into the future without depending on next generations of family members taking over. Ralf also explained how Demeter farms differ from standard organic farms in that all animal feed and fertilisers are grown on the farm and imported from elsewhere. Given Ralf's broken English, a fluent German-speaking Englishman, Andrew Munroe from a local Steiner school, helped with translations during a sit-down session with Ralf on the first floor of the farm's shop. The day was rounded off with a number of purchases made in the shop.