Gaus-Lütje between farming, super­mar­kets and social media

A warm spring morning in May; Bianca Lütje serves coffee and biscuits on the generous terrace in the garden behind the house. Her husband Ernst Lütje tells us: When customers come to our home, they find it so wonder­fully relaxed here. It is, but it is also hard and contin­uous work. Together with his busi­ness partner Jochen Gaus, who joins him shortly after­wards, he culti­vates 550ha of arable land. The crops are mainly grain, sugar beet, rape­seed and pota­toes, grown on the southern border of the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony, Germany. Each of the part­ners also keeps pigs, with photo­voltaic panels on the building roofs.

The most impor­tant main­stay is the potato, with around 100ha under cultivation, plus 12ha of onions and 2.5ha of sweet pota­toes. In addi­tion to cultivation, this branch of the busi­ness includes the storage and marketing of the prod­ucts – both directly to end customers via an online shop and farm shops, as well as through super­mar­kets in the region.

The collab­o­ra­tion began over 40 years ago with the current farm managers’ fathers, initially as a machinery part­ner­ship and, since 1992, with joint potato cultivation. The third gener­a­tion of both fami­lies are now ready to take over the busi­ness – a clear indi­ca­tion of the sustain­ability of the busi­ness concept and the interest in farming.

From direct sales to the super­market

Potato cultivation began with a desire for more inde­pen­dence from agri­cul­tural policy. As the farmers were accus­tomed to growing cereal crops, they initially entered contracts with processing compa­nies like peeling busi­nesses. However, in the first year, they received more money for surplus pota­toes, which they sold as fodder, than for the contracted goods.

“The good thing was that we enjoyed the pota­toes,” says Ernst. “And we believed that our neigh­bours would enjoy them too.” They initially started with direct sales through self-service stalls in the neigh­bouring villages. To ensure customers knew where the pota­toes came from, they devel­oped their own logo, which is still visible today on their pack­aging, sales stands, delivery vehi­cles, and their internet and social media pages.

The logo was enhanced with the slogan ‘Forget the noodles’, and soon the first super­market chain in the area took notice. The farmers quickly learned how crucial aware­ness, product quality and reli­able services, like ensuring avail­ability of the freshest possible pota­toes year-round, are for customers.

Posi­tive insights on social media

“Product adver­tising initially relied on tradi­tional adverts,” explains Bianca. But that no longer works as well today. Instead, there are dedi­cated shelf spaces in super­mar­kets, inno­v­a­tive plastic-free pack­aging, and the option to deliver loose pota­toes to super­mar­kets in specially branded crates to sell indi­vid­u­ally. New prod­ucts like onions, crunchy sweet potato crisps produced with special care, or flour made in-house during the coro­n­avirus period help to keep the brand fresh and youthful.

While special marketing campaigns are occa­sion­ally organ­ised for older customers, Bianca primarily relies on social media for the younger audi­ence. She regu­larly posts on the Insta­gram channel ‘Gaus-Luetje Kartof­feln’, which has over 11,000 followers. She posts about what is happening on the farm, what new prod­ucts are avail­able, or reports on activ­i­ties where the family’s faces are skil­fully show­cased. This gives users a posi­tive insight into agri­cul­ture, and the farmer is person­i­fied through the people, which builds trust. 

Bianca also main­tains another Insta­gram channel – ‘Hof-Luetje’. There she mainly show­cases small animals like chickens, cats, goats, sheep and ponies. She also uses the channel as a promo­tional plat­form for children’s birthday parties that she organ­ises on the farm. At the birthday parties, the chil­dren interact with the animals and farming. And when parents drop off or pick up their chil­dren, conver­sa­tions often arise, which she uses to discuss and explain the agri­cul­tural activ­i­ties. Even when pre-school groups or school classes visit the farm, and are guided through the barns, or try harvesting pota­toes with their own hands, the farmers strive to impart back­ground knowl­edge.

Seeking contact with consumers

An annual high­light for the farmers is their partic­i­pa­tion in Green Week in Berlin. There, they mainly meet consumers who know much less about food than previous gener­a­tions. “I feel bad about it, but I don’t know how a car works and I drive it anyway,” says Ernst. That’s just the way society has devel­oped. Never­the­less, they take every oppor­tu­nity to raise aware­ness about their work. Even when it comes to crit­ical issues, like the use of crop protec­tion prod­ucts, they openly address them and explain what they do. Most of the people they speak to show under­standing and say: “We didn’t even know that.”

Jochen and Ernst regu­larly attend specialist confer­ences and partic­i­pate in initia­tives to gain new insights and crit­i­cally assess their own work. In addi­tion, some of their land is in water protec­tion areas, which entails stricter envi­ron­mental require­ments for cultivation and neces­si­tates close co-oper­a­tion with the rele­vant author­i­ties. The FINKA project – which promotes bene­fi­cial insects in arable crops – for example, encour­ages a dialogue between conven­tional and organic farmers. They have already learnt a few things for their catch crop cultivation and weed control. With the regional value calcu­lator, they have tried to gain a more holistic view of their busi­ness. They do not know exactly how the entered data is calcu­lated. However, they have realised what contri­bu­tions their busi­ness makes to society beyond food produc­tion. This includes the educa­tional work they do and the jobs they provide in the region.

“We are one of the good ones”

A total of 10 perma­nent employees and an addi­tional 10 tempo­rary staff work on the farm. The farmers cannot compete with wages in the nearby VW cities of Wolfs­burg and Braun­schweig so offer other incen­tives, like a daily lunch together. People in the coun­try­side are also accus­tomed to helping each other out.

One for all – all for one, is one of the mottos that holds great signif­i­cance for the company. As they are known and recog­nised locally, they consis­tently find pensioners who are willing to make deliv­eries. When recruiting employees, however, they are increas­ingly turning to seasonal workers from Eastern Euro­pean coun­tries. The farm also helps with inte­grating immi­grants. In arable farming, says Jochen, producers have succeeded in compen­sating for the loss of labour with modern tech­nology. This helps when it comes to fulfilling the exten­sive reporting oblig­a­tions that agri­cul­ture is subject to.

By completing appli­ca­tions and docu­men­ta­tion require­ments, the producers are ulti­mately only showing that they are complying with the law, says Jochen. As the agri­cul­tural sector receives a lot of govern­mental payments, the unan­i­mous opinion is that farmers should approach this issue more calmly instead of just feeling pres­surised.

Farmers agree that the image of agri­cul­ture has improved in recent years. The coro­n­avirus crisis and the war in Ukraine have brought the issue of food secu­rity back to the fore­front of people’s minds. They believe that the farmers’ protests at the begin­ning of 2023 have created more under­standing of agri­cul­ture. The Gaus and Lütje fami­lies want to make their own contri­bu­tion to the profes­sion through their wide-ranging public activ­i­ties. “We want consumers to under­stand that we are one of the good ones,” says Ernst.