Several students from the NDSU agricultural and biosystems engineering department experienced German culture and agricultural technology during a trip abroad in March.
Several students from the NDSU agricultural and biosystems engineering department experienced German culture and agricultural technology during a trip abroad in March.
Organized with Study Abroad Services, the global seminar on agricultural technology took 11 NDSU students to Germany March 6-16 with a chaperone and ABEN senior lecturer Matthew Olhoft.
Students experienced Germany’s cutting-edge agriculture through exclusive farm visits and agribusiness tours.
The group started in Munich, Germany, at the Technical University of Munich, meeting with professors and students and touring a farm associated with the university.
In turn, German students from TUM will be traveling to NDSU June 9-11 to experience U.S. culture and technology and take part in AgTech Week, a weeklong celebration alongside growers, policymakers, educators, students, investors and innovative companies in the Fargo-Moorhead community.
“It’s nice that our students and their students connected. They had a really good time getting to know each other and they’re quite excited to meet again in June,” Olhoft said.
In Munich, students toured the BMW Museum and the Deutsches Museum, and toured the somber Dachau Concentration Camp during the week.
Industry tours were on the itinerary as well, as students networked with professionals at top companies and gained valuable industry insights.
Tours included Horsch Maschinen, which makes tillage and planting equipment that is assembled and sold near Mapleton in North Dakota, Amazone, which makes fertilizer spreaders and field sprayers, and the John Deere factory where the 5,000 and 6,000 series John Deere tractors are manufactured.
“They got to see what agriculture looks like in Germany, and also experience some of the culture,” Olhoft said. “They experienced the similarities that we have and the differences that we have.”
“Getting to travel around to different cities and see a wide variety of Germany was definitely my favorite part of the trip. This allowed us to compare the differences amongst the regions of Germany,” says Tate Reichmann, an NDSU student who participated on the trip. “German technology and engineering is very advanced. They seem to think through every little detail and don’t ever take a shortcut when designing.”
The group also visited a working farm near Nuremburg and later had a two-day stay on another dairy and small grain operation. They milked cows, drove tractors and slept in giant barrels overnight.
“That was really cool, because we got to experience the actual culture of living on a farm in Germany,” Olhoft said.
From that base, students toured a nearby ostrich farm and a poppyseed farm. They also saw a methane digester and an industrial hemp pelletizer. The pellets are used for fuel and livestock bedding. Another tour included a vineyard and bottling facility.
The students also visited TH OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts, a state tech university, where they saw similarities to NDSU’s business incubator and pilot plant. TH OWL researchers were developing a drink from the hull of coffee beans that had a cherry flavor.
“It was just a fantastic experience,” Olhoft said.
Next year, ABEN has plans to organize a similar trip to Brazil.
