Last week, the Irish Farmers Journal toured the central Bohemian region in the Czech Republic with a delegation of European journalists. The trip was organised by the European Commission and the aim was to showcase innovation and diversification in that country.
In total, the Czech Republic covers an area of 78,860km2, 54% is agricultural land and 34% is forestry. Of the agricultural land, 72% is arable land and 27% is permanent pasture and meadows, while 1% is permanent crops. Much of its agricultural area is situated on uplands and high hills but the area where we toured was predominately flat and undulating arable land.
The Czech Republic only came out of a communist regime in the early 1990s where for almost 50 years the majority of the land was farmed in large cooperatives. Today, 74% of the agricultural land is rented and the average farm size is about 130ha. Land ownership is highly fragmented with approximately one million farmers owning farms that are on average only 3.65ha in size.
Many farmers we visited spoke positively about funding received from the European Union to develop and modernise their farms through the rural development programme. However, similar to Ireland, many farmers felt that the bureaucracy involved is far too high. Some said that when the Czech agricultural department receive a directive from Europe they implement it to the highest standards, increasing the paper work farmers have to comply with.
Others mentioned the limitations that the nitrates directive is having on the tillage sector, with water protection taken very seriously and strict limits set on total fertiliser used and its proximity to water courses.
The Russian embargo is having an effect on farmers here, especially dairy farmers. The manager of a 2,000-cow dairy farming cooperative we visited (which stands to lose over €300,000 this year) said that he believes the removal of dairy quotas had no effect on milk price. But he blamed the lack of entry to the large Russian market on their doorstep as being the main reason for poor prices.
My personal assumption of the Czech Republic before the visit was of a poorly developed east European country with little infrastructure. However, what I saw was far from that uninformed perception; it is a very well-developed country with an unemployment rate of just 7% and has a top notch agricultural industry.
There are some challenges in agriculture with the current dual structure: 89% of farms are small and cover only 30% of the agricultural area and the remainder (11%) are larger farms that cover 70% of the area.
Nemecs’ farm
The most innovative farm we visited was the Nemecs’ farm in Radonice which is owned and run by Stanislav Nemec, his wife Hana and son Tomáš. This farm has several different enterprises in operation that are profitable. There are 30 regular employees plus some seasonal workers and an annual turnover of approximately €3.7m. The business is divided into several different areas:
Arable farming
Because they are in such a good arable location in the Czech Republic they have 300ha of wheat, 300ha malt barley, 110ha oilseed rape, 120ha sugar beet, 10 peas and 10ha alfalfa. All this produce is either sold at harvest or put in storage.
Grain storage
The second branch of the business is contract storage of grain for a French malt company. The Nemecs’ farm has storage capacity for up to 15,000t of malt barley. The majority of this storage was built in 2002 and 2010. For the past 20 years they have been storing malt barley for this company.
Milk processing, distribution and retailing
The third branch is the dairy, which is the most interesting. Their company buys in milk, processes it to make several different products and sells these products in a unique distribution and retail format. This system of selling milk direct has helped reduce their vulnerability to low milk prices.
The dairy has capacity for 6,000l of milk per day. A team of female Ukrainian women work in the dairy processing fresh milk, fresh cheeses, ice cream and yogurts. Stanislav wanted to have direct contact with the end consumer so he created a sophisticated system of distribution similar to a bus route.
“We have 25 stations where our delivery vans, full of not only our dairy produce, but also locally grown vegetables and meat, are sold. A timetable lets people know when we will arrive at a certain station so they can buy the fresh produce,” explained Stanislav.
He says the system has proven very popular. They have 14,000 customers now and he puts the success down to:
A large number of careful mothers who want their children to have the best of food.Nostalgic people who like the idea of knowing where their food comes from and who want contact with the producer. Patriotic people who only want to buy Czech food. People who care about the environment and believe in low food miles. Online food retailing and distribution
Together with 14 other farmers, Tomáš also launched the project “Nákup z farmy” – an online farmers market that complements the “Milk from the farm”. Orders can be picked up at 1,700 different sales/outlets and customers are guaranteed fresh products, direct from the producing farm.
Construction
The Nemecs also build houses on development land that they own from start to finish. All the money earned from these developments is used to buy agricultural land for the farm. Stanislav says land costs approximately €10,000 to €12,000/ha (€4,048 to €4,858/acre) in his region and on average it costs €168/ha to lease land.
Employee accommodation
They have developed a social programme offering company flats to their employees. Many employees are from the Ukraine and don’t have access to transport. Stanislav says by having accommodation on site it is easier to entice good workers to stay. The Nemecs also support local cultural activities and they even have their own small scale equestrian centre.
History of the farm
The Nemecs’ farm is an old family farm in Radonice, dating back to 1621. Stanislav and his wife Hana are both engineers. They took over the farm from Stanislav’s father in the late 1980s just in time for the Velvet Revolution and independence. The communist regime collapsed and the Czech Republic was formed, allowing private companies to flourish.
Stanislav’s father had to put up with serious changes during his farming career due to the political situation in the country, including the rise of a communist regime. His father was the last private farmer during the communist regime in 1948, and he eventually was faced with two choices – either to make his farm a cooperative and be a manager or go to prison.
He continued farming privately in a small way, avoiding prison, but he set up his own separate business working as a lorry driver and had a repair business. Unfortunately, he had constant interference from the communist state throughout his career. In 1990, after the communist regime collapsed and the republican revolution started, Stanislav established one of the first privately owned and run farms in the Czech Republic. Up to then, the majority of land was owned by large-scale cooperatives and state farms.
He used the business experience he had gained from his father during communist oppression to set up his own agricultural business. He had already got experience working in a state-run farm in his youth. He started farming 27ha while also carrying out repairs on machinery. All the time saving money and expanding the business. When he started farming, he had 28 dairy cows and was processing the milk and selling it as cheese to a retailer.
Space
In 1992, there was not enough space in the original small farm that he had so he built a new shed in the current area which was a green field site. He built his own small dairy and two sheds for grain storage. Now he is farming 850ha and he owns 150ha. From 1990 to 2003, the Nemecs had built dairy cow numbers up to 60 head but in 2004 decided to sell the herd because the cows were taking up to much time in terms of labour and Stanislav felt that the scale was not there to employ people to run it.
That is when they started to buy in milk from a neighbouring farm for processing.
Last week, the Irish Farmers Journal toured the central Bohemian region in the Czech Republic with a delegation of European journalists. The trip was organised by the European Commission and the aim was to showcase innovation and diversification in that country.
In total, the Czech Republic covers an area of 78,860km2, 54% is agricultural land and 34% is forestry. Of the agricultural land, 72% is arable land and 27% is permanent pasture and meadows, while 1% is permanent crops. Much of its agricultural area is situated on uplands and high hills but the area where we toured was predominately flat and undulating arable land.
The Czech Republic only came out of a communist regime in the early 1990s where for almost 50 years the majority of the land was farmed in large cooperatives. Today, 74% of the agricultural land is rented and the average farm size is about 130ha. Land ownership is highly fragmented with approximately one million farmers owning farms that are on average only 3.65ha in size.
Many farmers we visited spoke positively about funding received from the European Union to develop and modernise their farms through the rural development programme. However, similar to Ireland, many farmers felt that the bureaucracy involved is far too high. Some said that when the Czech agricultural department receive a directive from Europe they implement it to the highest standards, increasing the paper work farmers have to comply with.
Others mentioned the limitations that the nitrates directive is having on the tillage sector, with water protection taken very seriously and strict limits set on total fertiliser used and its proximity to water courses.
The Russian embargo is having an effect on farmers here, especially dairy farmers. The manager of a 2,000-cow dairy farming cooperative we visited (which stands to lose over €300,000 this year) said that he believes the removal of dairy quotas had no effect on milk price. But he blamed the lack of entry to the large Russian market on their doorstep as being the main reason for poor prices.
My personal assumption of the Czech Republic before the visit was of a poorly developed east European country with little infrastructure. However, what I saw was far from that uninformed perception; it is a very well-developed country with an unemployment rate of just 7% and has a top notch agricultural industry.
There are some challenges in agriculture with the current dual structure: 89% of farms are small and cover only 30% of the agricultural area and the remainder (11%) are larger farms that cover 70% of the area.
Nemecs’ farm
The most innovative farm we visited was the Nemecs’ farm in Radonice which is owned and run by Stanislav Nemec, his wife Hana and son Tomáš. This farm has several different enterprises in operation that are profitable. There are 30 regular employees plus some seasonal workers and an annual turnover of approximately €3.7m. The business is divided into several different areas:
Arable farming
Because they are in such a good arable location in the Czech Republic they have 300ha of wheat, 300ha malt barley, 110ha oilseed rape, 120ha sugar beet, 10 peas and 10ha alfalfa. All this produce is either sold at harvest or put in storage.
Grain storage
The second branch of the business is contract storage of grain for a French malt company. The Nemecs’ farm has storage capacity for up to 15,000t of malt barley. The majority of this storage was built in 2002 and 2010. For the past 20 years they have been storing malt barley for this company.
Milk processing, distribution and retailing
The third branch is the dairy, which is the most interesting. Their company buys in milk, processes it to make several different products and sells these products in a unique distribution and retail format. This system of selling milk direct has helped reduce their vulnerability to low milk prices.
The dairy has capacity for 6,000l of milk per day. A team of female Ukrainian women work in the dairy processing fresh milk, fresh cheeses, ice cream and yogurts. Stanislav wanted to have direct contact with the end consumer so he created a sophisticated system of distribution similar to a bus route.
“We have 25 stations where our delivery vans, full of not only our dairy produce, but also locally grown vegetables and meat, are sold. A timetable lets people know when we will arrive at a certain station so they can buy the fresh produce,” explained Stanislav.
He says the system has proven very popular. They have 14,000 customers now and he puts the success down to:
A large number of careful mothers who want their children to have the best of food.Nostalgic people who like the idea of knowing where their food comes from and who want contact with the producer. Patriotic people who only want to buy Czech food. People who care about the environment and believe in low food miles. Online food retailing and distribution
Together with 14 other farmers, Tomáš also launched the project “Nákup z farmy” – an online farmers market that complements the “Milk from the farm”. Orders can be picked up at 1,700 different sales/outlets and customers are guaranteed fresh products, direct from the producing farm.
Construction
The Nemecs also build houses on development land that they own from start to finish. All the money earned from these developments is used to buy agricultural land for the farm. Stanislav says land costs approximately €10,000 to €12,000/ha (€4,048 to €4,858/acre) in his region and on average it costs €168/ha to lease land.
Employee accommodation
They have developed a social programme offering company flats to their employees. Many employees are from the Ukraine and don’t have access to transport. Stanislav says by having accommodation on site it is easier to entice good workers to stay. The Nemecs also support local cultural activities and they even have their own small scale equestrian centre.
History of the farm
The Nemecs’ farm is an old family farm in Radonice, dating back to 1621. Stanislav and his wife Hana are both engineers. They took over the farm from Stanislav’s father in the late 1980s just in time for the Velvet Revolution and independence. The communist regime collapsed and the Czech Republic was formed, allowing private companies to flourish.
Stanislav’s father had to put up with serious changes during his farming career due to the political situation in the country, including the rise of a communist regime. His father was the last private farmer during the communist regime in 1948, and he eventually was faced with two choices – either to make his farm a cooperative and be a manager or go to prison.
He continued farming privately in a small way, avoiding prison, but he set up his own separate business working as a lorry driver and had a repair business. Unfortunately, he had constant interference from the communist state throughout his career. In 1990, after the communist regime collapsed and the republican revolution started, Stanislav established one of the first privately owned and run farms in the Czech Republic. Up to then, the majority of land was owned by large-scale cooperatives and state farms.
He used the business experience he had gained from his father during communist oppression to set up his own agricultural business. He had already got experience working in a state-run farm in his youth. He started farming 27ha while also carrying out repairs on machinery. All the time saving money and expanding the business. When he started farming, he had 28 dairy cows and was processing the milk and selling it as cheese to a retailer.
Space
In 1992, there was not enough space in the original small farm that he had so he built a new shed in the current area which was a green field site. He built his own small dairy and two sheds for grain storage. Now he is farming 850ha and he owns 150ha. From 1990 to 2003, the Nemecs had built dairy cow numbers up to 60 head but in 2004 decided to sell the herd because the cows were taking up to much time in terms of labour and Stanislav felt that the scale was not there to employ people to run it.
That is when they started to buy in milk from a neighbouring farm for processing.
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