BCG intern Sebastien Sester’s family farm is in Berrwiller, France. Read what happens ‘on his farm’.Â
My family farm is in Berrwiller, a small town in North Eastern France. The area is predominantly flat, but surrounded by mountains. The climate is semi-continental, with cold winters (-15°C) and hot summers (38°C). Average yearly rainfall is 800mm, spring and autumn-dominant. It is a mixed country, with dairy or cattle farms, broadacre cropping, fruit and vegetable farms and vineyards.
The farming business started many years ago, with a 5ha cropping, dairy and pig enterprise. Over the years, my grandfather and my father extended the business and progressively abandoned the milk and meat enterprises to focus on cropping exclusively. Nowadays, the 130ha farm is run by my parents and a full-time employee. There are 116ha of grain crops on a corn/soybean/winter wheat rotation. Next to that, pip fruits are grown on 7ha and grapes for wine-making on another 7ha. Many seasonal workers come only for hand-picking fruits and grapes.
My dad has been no-till farming for 26 years, which is quite uncommon in France. We use a three meter wide disc seeder on 19cm row-spacing to sow our crops at a density of 300Â plants/m2 for wheat. After harvest, we sow a cover crop mixture of different species (oats, peas, vetch, lentils, phacelia, field beans, mustard).Â
Average yields are 9.5t/ha for corn, 3.3t/ha for soybean and 8.5t/ha for wheat. This year’s wheat harvest was below average (7.7t/ha, while there was potential for 10.5t/ha), namely because of an extremely wet year (800mm from January to July), low temperatures at flowering and a lack of sunlight before harvest. With these wet conditions, many diseases were around, lowering yield, grain quality and making it hard for timely fungicide sprays.
Because I chose to study abroad, I am most of the time away from the farm. Every time I am back home I love to have a look at the crop with my dad, and try to get involved in farm work. I always like to hear about how the season is progressing and what my parents are working on.
The main challenge we face on the farm is climate variability: we experienced very wet years and very dry ones consecutively. This makes decision-making very hard and adds uncertainty to the outcome of the season. Low cereal prices and increased production costs over the last years make it even harder.
According to my father, the cropping area is actually too small to be profitable on the long run so new investments in land and machinery will be needed in the future. The fruit and grape enterprises perform well, but will need expansion too.
I personally think that technology should play a more central role in the business. With my parents only having a few more years before retirement, I will face the choice of taking over the farm and expanding it, or living off farm.
Sebastien Sester is undertaking a six month practice-orientated internship at BCG, examining agronomic and farming systems research as part of his Masters of Science at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. More of Sebastien’s insights can be found here.
