Jens Engelken is an agricultural engineer by training and now runs the family home with his wife Stephanie and their three children, at Haren-Wesuwe in north-west Germany, close to the Dutch border.
It is no ordinary farm though, for the couple have greatly extended the scope of its production to include not just the usual cereals and root crops, but also energy, which is now the biggest enterprise on the farm.
It was in 2010 that a biogas unit was installed on the farm which supplies electricity directly to the German grid via a pair of diesel-engine-powered generators running on the methane produced in the plant.
It is one of 9,000 such units run on German family farms, the majority of which were built in response to a much higher price for electricity produced from renewable resources.
Unfortunately, that price has not risen in line with labour and other costs and the margin is barely adequate, according to Jens, who is seeking to increase the return from the plant by arranging a higher price for its output.
Yet it doesn’t stop there; surplus heat from the engines is used to dry wood and is even piped over to the nearby Lemken factory to help warm the buildings in winter.
Lemken, which arranged the visit, is an enthusiastic customer for the heat because it fits into the company’s ambition to reduce the amount of energy it needs to buy-in from non-renewable resources to run its modern seed drill assembly plant at Haren.
Firewood is dried by drawing air from above the engines and feeding in to demountable type containers that have been filled with the cut and split timber.
This reduces the drying process from two years to around 50 days.
Feeding the beast
The Engelkens feed the plant using a mix of maize silage, sugar beet, cattle and chicken manure from their own free range flock, with the gas produced feeding a pair of MAN V12 diesels of 700hp apiece.
This season they have also been using whole crop wheat and barley which has been offered to them at half the normal price due to the wet harvest.
Crops in Germany have been as badly effected as Ireland with approximately 1200mm of rain already this year, compared to the average for the region of 720mm.
However, this follows three years of rainfall that was well below that figure.
Other enterprises at Hof Engelken
The other major enterprise on the farm is a free range egg production unit which stands slightly away from the main farm buildings.
This manure is also used to feed the methane plant, although the excessive amount of nitrogen it leaves in the distillate is starting to cause concern.
When first constructed, it was intended that grass silage be also used as a feedstock.
Unfortunately, this turned out to be unsuitable due to the high dry matter content. The answer was to first feed it through some cattle housed on straw and then use the dung for digestor.
This led to the establishment of a beef finishing unit which although profitable in its own right, pales into insignificance when compared to the income from energy sales.
Shifting the paradigm
Visiting the farm it soon becomes apparent that Hof Engelken has not simply installed a digestor plant as a useful waste disposal unit, the logic behind it runs much deeper than that.
Instead, the farm has totally reoriented its business model so that energy becomes the prime product with other enterprises bolted on to support its output.
Jens and Stephanie Engelken still exude great enthusiasm for what they are doing and are busy planning for the future.
Jens told Agriland that supplying the gas directly to the local gas grid is one option under serious consideration, while taking the eggs directly to the market is another activity they are continuing to develop.
With so much ambition being devoted to the business, there is every hope that the next generation of the family will have a solid and profitable farm to continue to develop for many years to come.