Species-appropriate feeding is popular: ARGE Heumilch strengthens farmers in the Allgäu

Created: 06/12/2022, 08:00

By: Tom Otto

The cows at the Lerf dairy farm near Ottobeuren are doing well: They are allowed to be out on the pasture or in the exercise area at least 120 days a year.

Tethering in stables is prohibited according to the EU seal of approval.

© Tom Otto

Ottobeuren - While the normal per capita milk consumption in Germany has been falling for years, the hay milk farmers can report increasing consumption year after year.

As the ARGE Heumilch announced last week in Dennenberg at the press conference at the Milchhof Lerf, the organization was able to achieve an EU seal of approval for the hay milk and receive funding for the sale of the particularly high-quality milk.

Hay farming is the most original form of milk production.

Adapted to the course of the seasons, hay milk cows spend every summer on local meadows, pastures and alpine pastures, where a variety of juicy grasses and herbs grow.

In winter the animals are provided with hay.

As a supplement, they receive grain meal.

Digested fodder such as silage is strictly prohibited.

All products are controlled GMO-free.

Cheese can only be produced without the addition of preservatives and without intensive mechanical treatment if we consistently do without fermented feed such as silage.

Mountain cheeses that mature longer, Emmental and other hard and semi-hard cheeses, for example, cannot be made from standard milk.

Currently, 85 percent of the hay milk production goes into cheese production.

promoting biodiversity

The hay farmers cultivate their small areas like a mosaic;

This means that not all areas are mowed at once, but offset spatially and staggered in time.

This preserves a vital habitat for bees, butterflies and small game.

Many areas are only mowed when a large number of grasses and herbs are in bloom and the biodiversity is at its greatest.

The hay farmers even accept one or two fewer cuts per summer for the pollination and survival of the most diverse plants that are made possible in this way.

Hay milk protects the climate

Through the management of permanent grassland, CO2 remains bound in the soil, which would escape into the atmosphere if the field were plowed up.

Grassland stores even more carbon than forest soil.

The hay economy is the sustainable form of cattle farming because it has a 40 percent lower global warming potential than industrialized systems.

In Germany, the market share of hay milk is currently less than one percent of total milk production.

"It doesn't have to stay that way, in Austria, for example, the proportion of hay milk is already over 15 percent," says Christiane Mösl, Managing Director of ARGE Heumilch Austria.

In the neighboring country, hay milk farmers and cheese dairies came together to form ARGE Heumilch in 2004, ten years earlier than in Germany.

The hay milk regions are mainly in the Alps, where hay farming has been a tradition for centuries.

The main production areas are Vorarlberg, Tyrol, Salzburg, Upper Austria, Styria, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and eastern and central Switzerland.

In the catchment area of ​​our newspaper, the Lerf dairy in Dennenberg, the Fischer dairy in Eggenthal and the Wiggensbach show dairy belong to ARGE Heumilch.

For them, farming hay is not only good for their conscience, but also good for their wallets: the milk prices for hay milk farmers are a lot higher than for standard milk farmers.

The managing director of the German ARGE Heumilch is the Eastern Allgäu dairy farmer Markus Fischer from Eggenthal.