Working days of 14 to 16 hours are not a rarity for farmer Jörg Beer. Together with his father and an employee, he runs a 525 hectare arable farm on the outskirts of Nonnewitz in Saxony Anhalt.

The peak times in spring, summer and winter are very demanding for Jörg Beer and his team. The highlight this year was the constant rain during the harvest. Despite the unfavourable conditions, the farmer still managed to bring in a decent harvest. And as a result, the autumn ploughing went nice and smoothly. The Indian summer ensured that the ploughing work could be carried out at the optimal time. 

However, it almost ended up being too dry again for Beer too soon. A large dust cloud covered the entire 10 m working width of the soil cultivation machinery. All ploughing work has to be carried out in a specific order. His employees prepared the seedbed in the early hours of the morning with a short-disc harrow and cultivator in just 2 or 3 works steps. The soil then had to be left for a few hours to air out. Once this was done, Beer started with the drilling, sometime working until late into the night when necessary. At first, the trained chef had absolutely no interest in agriculture whatsoever. But when his father reestablished a municipal services company and a farm after the reunification of Germany and then started to rent more and more land, he simply could not resist getting involved. The 40-year-old passed his final professional training and his master exams and eventually took over the farm near Nonnewitz three years ago.

Ploughless tillage, AKRA special fertiliser in use

The new farm manager has changed a few things. He has stopped time-consuming activities, like clearing snow in winter, and has given up the sugar beet quota. “Even though the sugar factory in Zeitz is just a few kilometres from the farm, I no longer have to spend lots of time working for the relatively low sugar beet quota,” explained Beer. Despite all the modernising measures undertaken, he has not been able to escape the structural peculiarities of the region.

Lignite mining in the neighbouring Profen open-cast mine has a massive impact on the work on Beer’s farm. Foreign objects, like old railway tracks and foundations, can cause significant damage to machinery when ploughing on the recultivated areas that used to be used for mining. As such, Beer’s is one of the first farms in the region to do away with ploughs. especially since his fields are smaller than many other East German structures due to the post-mining landscape and the construction of bypass roads.

The farmer also has to remember to take this into account with the fertilising. “With soils with a pH-value of 7 to 7.6, I never need to use lime,” explained Beer. As a result, he needs to fix important main and trace elements, like phosphorous and molybdenum, in the soil. This is why the farm manager has been using the AKRA special fertiliser from Austrian manufacturer AKRA for over 13 years now. AKRA’s field sales representative Horst Reinboth regularly advises him in this area.