Simon Mitterer - 28 Years - Agricultural Master

- Interview -

When did you start doing your job?
The help in my parents' business started playfully in my childhood, and my enthusiasm for farming grew steadily. I started training as a farmer at the age of 16 and then completed the school for business management and master craftsmen.

What motivates you and what do you like about your job?
Agriculture is my way of life. I love to manage our farm, which has been in the family for generations, to shape its future, to continue where my father & grandfather started. To work with animals, technology and nature means to experience something new and unknown every day. You can't calculate everything, even if many would like to. Therefore every day is different and exciting at the same time. I am my own boss and I can arrange the work as I want and as I see it is the right way.

What do you wish for your professional future?
For the future, I would like to see more appreciation for the domestic agricultural production. In addition, legal and political framework conditions that allow us a certain planning security.

To what extent has the COVID-19 pandemic influenced or changed your field of work?
Corona has affected us primarily in terms of the producer prices of our milk and the marketability of the calves in a negative way.

- Comment -

I was able to accompany Simon for a whole day in his daily work as a master farmer with a focus on milk production. In addition to current topics such as the constantly advancing climate change, which is proving to be very drastic and incalculable for our domestic farmers, I was given an honest and open insight into this systemically important profession.

Simon & his family have been running the farm conscientiously and with the highest motivation for decades. Nevertheless, they often have to struggle with the social esteem and the resulting price dumping on our food market. In view of the current Corona Pandemic, the general conditions have not really improved in these terms. Nevertheless, I see - especially now - an opportunity to deal more consciously with the issue of food production and the esteem that goes with it in the future. On a social but also on a political level.