Susanne Hovmand-Simonsen is the fourth-generation owner of Knuthenlund farm in Stokkemarke, Denmark. She has made the largest conversion from conventional to organic farming in Denmark’s history. Just a year after taking over the family farm in 2006, Hovmand-Simonsen was successful in convincing her investors to support the conversion.
“Most consumers don’t know how their food is being made and what the consequence is on nature, the drinking water supply, the animals [and] also on their own health” says Hovmand-Simonsen, adding “consumers have lost the ability to taste the difference in the quality of food. Everything they buy in the supermarket is packed in plastic and they have given all responsibility to the large supermarket chains to choose the food they are eating. Most consumers are therefore used to a narrow selection of food varieties and most of it just industrially produced.”
Knuthenlund’s 940 hectares (2,323 acres) were converted into organic agriculture, and that was just the beginning. Susanne Hovmand-Simonsen has continuously expanded the scope of what organic farming, land management, and animal husbandry, mean to her. “After having worked with organic production for some years I realized that we needed to go even further, and that organic food could also be industrialized. I realized that we needed to implement a more holistic way of looking at our nature, the animals, the food production, in order to reach the quality both healthwise and tastewise.”
As a result, the team at Knuthenlund has not only nourished and revived the land, but they’ve also reintroduced local species to Danish consumers.
