IT WAS my good fortune to visit Germany twice last month. Since my return I have been asked frequently whether farming is better there than here: my standard reply has been that things could hardly be worse here, so they must be better there.
Certainly the size and quality of the tractors on some of the farms which we visited were to be envied, but we only were to see the best of what they had to offer.
However, there was no comparison in weather terms: on my first visit to SW Germany the average temperature was probably about 30°C, and even on my more recent visit it was generally dry but not quite as hot.
The common factor between these two visits was the quantity of fresh asparagus and strawberries on offer: having had my fill over there, I certainly do not feel envious of people going to Wimbledon this year to consume all those strawberries and cream!
Nobody who visits Germany will ever feel hungry. You will also be eating food produced in Germany, and not carted in from all areas of the globe, as happens in this country.
Perhaps one of the more interesting parts of the tour for me were the rules of succession that applied in Germany.
In the former western part, the whole of the property of the farm would pass to one son, not necessarily the eldest, and all other children would be compensated according to a national formula.
However, the son who inherited the farm would have to maintain the property and agree not to sell it for about 20 years if he wished to inherit in his own name.
Whilst this might seem a little unfair on the other children, it does insure that a substantial farmhouse or schloss would remain in the same family for successive generations without the estate being destroyed and broken up, like in many other parts of Europe.
In the former GDR, East Germany, the problems were different, as any estate of more than 100ha had been confiscated by the communists.
Former collective farms there now have a multitude of owners, but those that can be traced as former owners rarely wish to return to farm the land themselves these days, as better jobs and lifestyles can be had away from the countryside.
Having been in the position of an only son to inherit a family estate, I sometimes felt the owners of some of the German farms we visited had drawn the short straw: often the cost and work of maintaining substantial former family homes and extensive stables around the farmyard was more than the agricultural income which they could obtain from the land.
So I think I might just be grateful that the burden of succession was passed to my sisters in a Will made by my mother which totally contradicted anything which my father might have wished to happen.
