Hohnhorst, population 2,300, Lower Saxony. If you grow up here, you know the silence that follows work in the barn, the smell of earth after rain - and the conversations fathers have with their sons once the work is done. Cord Lattwesen, 49, grew up in this world. It still contains everything that drives him today. His family farm was first mentioned in local chronicles in the 15th century. It carries centuries of history: 120 dairy cows, arable farming, a biogas plant, three generations living under one roof. Two full-time employees, one part-time worker, three children aged between 18 and 21. He and his wife Kirsten run the farm together. Responsibility has never felt like a burden to him. More like the very material life is made of.
Values passed down
For the past ten years, he has also served as mayor of Hohnhorst. During election campaigns, he still goes door to door himself and knows most residents by their first name. No stagecraft, no political performance. The work is practical and local: roads, playgrounds, housing developments, drainage ditches. That’s exactly what he values. “I want our community to remain an attractive place to live and to offer others a good home as well.” There is no party-political infighting on the local council, he says. If someone has a convincing idea, it gets implemented - regardless of political colour. He calls it “constructive cooperation” and says it as though it were the most natural thing in the world. His father served as mayor before him. “That’s the example he set for me. I suppose community involvement is practically in my genes,” says Lattwesen with a smile that suggests he is quoting someone he misses deeply.
”I want our community to remain attractive and to offer others a pleasant home as well.”
Milk with a name behind it
What does it mean to be a cooperative member at DMK? For Cord Lattwesen, it’s not an abstract question. Every morning, when milk from his 120 cows is collected, a journey begins whose destination he knows - and is proud of. His work ends up in MILRAM products on supermarket shelves across Germany. His milk is part of cheeses exported to Asia and the Middle East. For him, that is the true meaning of a cooperative: farmers are not merely suppliers of raw materials, but co-creators of products that people hold in their hands every day.
He describes the partnership with DMK as reliable and close. Stable purchasing prices, transparent communication, and a sense that the dairy understands the pressures farms are under. That, he says, is far from guaranteed. Many farmers in Germany know the opposite: buyers who go silent when times are hard and apply pressure whenever they can. “With DMK, it’s different,” says Lattwesen. “You talk to each other. You look for solutions together.”
A cooperative in transition
He has followed the cooperative’s development from an early age: the mergers, the upheavals, the long years of restructuring. What he sees today is a company that has come through the hardest part of its transformation - and emerged from it noticeably stronger. Away from being purely a raw-material supplier, towards becoming a brand in its own right. MILRAM now has a clear place in German chilled aisles, and DMK cheese is consumed on several continents. “There was no alternative to that path,” he says. “But you have to be prepared to go through years where the benefits aren’t immediately visible.”
He knows what he’s talking about. There were years on the farm when every cent had to be stretched. Years when the dairy invested heavily while producer prices remained tight. Years when you got up in the morning and went to bed not knowing whether the numbers would work out in the end. The experience didn’t make him bitter. It grounded him. And today, it allows him to look calmly at what DMK has become: a company with the staying power it needed.
Now a merger with Arla is on the horizon. Lattwesen views it with confidence – Arla is a brand he feels comfortable standing behind. Two cooperatives growing together. He believes the result can become more than the sum of its parts.
What consumers never see
At the moment, the regional horticultural show is occupying much of his attention. He wants agriculture to be presented there not as decoration, but as an argument. In the demonstration garden: broad beans, sugar beet, old and new machinery side by side. A crop sprayer from the 1950s next to today’s satellite-guided precision technology. The contrast is meant to explain what debates alone often cannot. “It’s remarkable how much technology has changed - and most people have no idea.” He sees dialogue between agriculture and society as essential. Not to complain, but to replace prejudice with understanding.
The political framework for farming, he says, has been difficult for years. Animal welfare funding programmes that disappear quietly after three years – while the regulations remain. Governments create incentives, withdraw them, and leave farms to deal with the consequences alone. Anyone running a farm like his needs planning security. Too often, they don’t get it. And yet, what keeps him going is not stubbornness. It is a deep conviction that this profession - this way of life - carries its own meaning within it. Being a farmer is not a job you clock out from. It’s a 24-hour existence that you have to love if you want to do it well. His three children have inherited that belief.
Sometimes, when a decision weighs heavily - on the farm, in the council chamber or within the cooperative - he asks himself how his father would have responded. How he would have interpreted things, with his wide reading, sharp memory and calm habit of asking questions instead of offering answers. Those long evenings in his father’s office, once the day’s work was done and the two of them made plans together - that wasn’t nostalgia. That was education.
And usually, by then, he already knows the answer.
