BRODOWIN is not exactly a renowned landmark for a foreign head of state to visit, but on March 30, King Charles III paid a visit to a farm there to see how its take ecological agriculture works and how the farmers there are helping protect the wetlands.

The village was very surprised to receive a letter from the royal household back in January asking if the King could pay a visit. In his honour, the local cheese factory he visited has created a new Brodowin King’s Cheese.

I wonder, though if he knows anything about the history of this village and if he will ask the villagers about their lives in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). I somehow doubt it.

Brodowin, with its 2,500-hectare farm, is today the largest “biodynamic” farm in Germany. The German biodynamic movement began life in 1924 and is based on a rotational crop system that allows land to lie fallow, recognising the inter-relational aspects of wildlife and human agriculture.

It is arguably the most sustainable form of agriculture and goes way beyond the fulfilment of EU-determined ecological standards.

After reunification and the break-up of the old GDR co-operative, there was a considerable loss of jobs. Today only 150 workers are employed to look after 160 dairy cows, 250 goats and 2,400 chickens. The farm grows 15 types of vegetables alongside fodder plants.

The village has a strong anti-fascist tradition. In 1937 the local Protestant pastor convened a secret confessional church synod which would become the focus of Christian opposition to the Nazis, refusing to be co-opted or accept fascist doctrines.

At the end of the war, in 1945, many refugees from the former occupied eastern provinces settled in and around the village. In the Soviet-occupied zone, which became the GDR in 1949, the big landowners were expropriated and much of their land was distributed to the peasants.

Then, in 1955, as a result of the GDR’s reorganisation of agricultural production, many small farms were amalgamated to create a more efficient agricultural production system — a mixture of state-owned and co-operative units, and these became the forerunners of the co-operatives that were founded later.

With German unification, all GDR state-owned farms, as well as co-operatives, were broken up, and much of the land became an object of lucrative speculative investment for wealthy West Germans.

But during GDR times the village of Brodowin was the centre of a flourishing agricultural co-operative, and its local church continued to be active in the community, organising cultural events — the Brodowin Church Summer Festivals.

From 1980 onwards, on the initiative of the writer, Raimar Gilsenbach — a human rights activist and ecologist — artists, scientists and other ecologically minded individuals were drawn to the village to discuss environmental issues, as part of the so-called Brodowin Conversations.

This initiative led indirectly to the setting up of Brodowin as a pioneering organic farming community in 1991, after German reunification: the villagers consciously banded together to avoid being co-opted by the West German land-grab taking place at the time.

It remains a beacon for organic farming in Germany today — and its reputation for innovative and successful organic farming and sustainable living is, no doubt, what tickled the interest of Britain’s new monarch and led to his visit to this inconspicuous little village on his first trip abroad.

Brodowin lies in a lush landscape, surrounded by lakes formed by the retreat of the Ice Age around 10,000 years ago. Around these lakes are extensive forests and water meadows.

Close to Brodowin is Brandenburg’s oldest nature reserve, the Plagefenn, created in 1907. Its area of 178 hectares consists of a landscape of moorland, forest and lakes.

Its central zone is a wilderness area which has been left to develop naturally and is protected from human influences. Otters, beavers, green sandpipers, and cranes breed here, and it is a habitat for many rare plants and butterflies.

Before the implosion of the USSR-led socialist world, the GDR and much of eastern Europe remained very much a wildlife haven.

This was not directly due to socialist policies as such but because agriculture there was, even in the post-war period, less mechanised and dependent on pesticides and artificial fertilisers than in the West.

There were also swathes of land that had been reserved for military exercises — a useful side effect of which was that large areas were left untouched for wildlife to flourish: wolves have now made some of these areas their home.

Also, there was not the capitalist pressure to squeeze every grain of corn and every ounce of fodder out of the land. Field borders were left uncut, ponds and scrubland were left undisturbed and trees were left to mature. This allowed wildlife to flourish.

East Germany — Mecklenburg and Brandenburg — can boast the largest populations of sea eagles, ospreys and red kites in Europe, birds that had become virtually extinct in Britain until very recently.

For me, visiting this area is like going back to my childhood, with yellowhammers, linnets and corn buntings singing from every hedgerow, skylarks towering in the skies over the meadows and woodpeckers drilling echoing from the woodlands.

Beavers and otters inhabit most of the lakes, and roe and fallow deer stalk the woodland, alongside wild boar and today, even wolves. The woods and fields are full of flowering plants and, in autumn, wild fungi.

One had hoped that this situation would continue but already capitalist and intensive agricultural methods are being introduced by the land’s new, mainly Western, owners.

I hope King Charles returns from his trip with some good ideas about sustainable living and organic farming and pass on a few tips to our government, perhaps starting with some good co-operative initiatives of our own, but I am not holding my breath.