GERMANY
Home of history and tradition
From 8 to 10 October, the 67th annual general meeting of the ‘Bund Deutscher Champignon- und Kulturpilzanbauer’ was held in the historic location of Potsdam.
The BDC has its classic highlights and the annual general meeting is one of them. By John Peeters
S
eehotel Seminaris is situated at some distance from Potsdam. Nice and peaceful, but the historic city centre was unfortunately too far away for a stroll. Thanks to its proximity to Berlin, many of the participants extended their stay by adding the weekend, but not before visiting the very impressive Dohme-owned Havelland Champignon company.
What can you leave out?
After the traditional, members-only meeting, chairman Michael Schattenberg opened the plenary proceedings of the conference. He thanked people such as Peter Marseille and Franz Schmaus for their efforts during the BuGa, the biennial Federal Horticultural Show in Germany, which was held this year close to Berlin. He was very satisfied with the record number of 173 attendees at this year’s AGM. Mushroom growing in Germany is alive and kicking, a fact supported by the good attendance. Schattenberg then welcomed Dr. Renate Spraul for the day’s first presentation. Dr. Spraul has a horticultural background and is specialised in labour processes. She started with the promising hypothesis: “What
can you leave out when picking mushrooms?” Spraul: “A picker shouldn’t aim to work faster, but more efficiently. It’s therefore crucial to limit the distance pickers have to stretch by placing all the equipment in the right place, meaning the punnets, the bucket for waste and the ladder. This can lead to serious savings on farms.” She then cited a few examples of what not to do, such as pickers having to crawl between shelving to pick mushrooms. In general terms, it was a useful contribution. It was just a shame that Spraul had visited a somewhat older tray picking farm without modern picking lorries to take photographs and illustrate her points, something that slightly devalued her interesting talk.
Heimat and Volkswagen Michael Legrand from the “Grünes Medienhaus”, an organisation contracted by the BDC to coordinate the marketing efforts for mushrooms online and in other media, including running the www.
gesunde-pilze.de website, told the growers present about progress regarding the website, the Facebook and YouTube channels and other media publication issued by the BDC. Legrand would like to
(Nearly) all the participants in front of the hotel.
Renate Spraul and behind her BDC chairman Michael Schattenberg.
8 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
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