About DLG

Board of Directors 

Hubertus Paetow
President of DLG
Farmer, Finkenthal, OT Schlutow (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania)

Hubertus Paetow was born in 1967 in Schleswig-Holstein, where he also trained as a farmer. After obtaining a degree in agricultural sciences in Göttingen and Kiel, he was managing director of an arable farm in the vicinity of Kiel until 2005. Since then, he has been running his own farm, focusing on arable farming and seed production, in Finkenthal-Schlutow (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania). Besides holding other offices in associations and local politics, Hubertus Paetow was vice president of DLG and chairman of the DLG Test Center from 2015. Hubertus Paetow has been the president of DLG since 2018. He is represented on various committees such as the Council for Sustainable Development or the Agricultural Future Commission, for instance.

 Dr Lothar Hövelmann Managing Director

Dr Lothar Hövelmann
Managing Director 

Born in 1962, Dr Lothar Hövelmann embarked on his career in the agricultural industry with an apprenticeship on two farms in the Lower Rhine region. After a further year spent working as a farmer, he relocated to Bonn, where he studied agricultural sciences – specialising in crop production – and followed this with a scientific study on tilling recultivated soils at the Bonn Institute of Crop Science. He completed this research work with a dissertation. From 1993 to 1997, he worked in the field of organic waste composting in Brake/Lower Weser and switched to the German Agricultural Society (DLG e.V.) in Frankfurt am Main in 1998. He started work there as a crop production project manager and was managing director of the umbrella association Agrarforschung e.V. (agricultural research) at the same time from 1998 to 2008. From 2005 onwards, he was the head of DLG's newly established specialist area of sustainable agriculture. In 2008, he became a member of DLG's management board and headed the DLG Competence Center Agriculture. In 2015, he was additionally appointed to the Board of DLG. He has been the managing director of DLG since 2022.

Dr Diedrich Harms Intertek Food Services GmbH, Bremen

Dr Diedrich Harms
Intertek Food Services GmbH, Bremen

Born in 1968, Dr Harms has been bringing his expertise to bear in DLG's professional and quality work since 2006. Dr Harms obtained his doctorate in natural sciences after studying chemistry and food chemistry at the universities of Marburg and Münster. From 1999 to 2006, he was responsible for quality control at König-Brauerei (Duisburg); from 2006 to 2016, he was head of the central laboratory at Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei in Berlin (VLB) e.V. (research and teaching institute for brewing in Berlin). He has been head of the analytics department at Intertek Food Service GmbH since 2016. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Stiftung Warentest (foundation for product testing). Dr Harms' voluntary work within DLG ranges from chairing the Test Center Food to membership of the DLG Test Commissions for Beer, Fruit and Soft Drinks as well as the Sensory Analysis Committee and work as an authorised Test Center tester. 

 Prof. Till Meinel Cologne Institute of Construction Machinery and Agricultural Engineering

Prof. Till Meinel
Cologne Institute of Construction Machinery and Agricultural Engineering

Born in 1962, Till Meinel studied mechanical engineering with a focus on agricultural engineering at TU Dresden from 1982 to 1987. He subsequently embarked on a research degree at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig, Institute for Agriculture in the Tropics and Subtropics, which he completed with a doctorate in 1992. He has long-term experience in the development of agricultural machinery. From 1991 to 1999, he worked as a design engineer for seed drills at ACCORD Landmaschinen GmbH in Soest. From 1999 to his appointment as a professor at Cologne University of Applied Sciences in 2009, he was responsible for the development and design of soil tillage and seeding technology at the Kverneland Group, where he worked as the Manager Research & Development Seeding Technology. Till Meinel has been professor for agricultural and design engineering at the Institute of Construction Machinery and Agricultural Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne since 2009. Within DLG, he was chairperson of the Seeding Technology and Soil Tillage Test Commission of the DLG Test Center Technology and Farm Inputs. In 2018, he was appointed chairperson of the Test Center and DLG vice president. 

Prof. Katharina Riehn Professor of Food Microbiology and Toxicology, HAW Hamburg

Prof. Katharina Riehn
Professor of Food Microbiology and Toxicology, HAW Hamburg

Born in 1975, Prof. Katharina Riehn is a veterinary specialist in food safety and meat hygiene as well as professor of food microbiology and toxicology at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. She has been working in scientific interface positions within the food and agricultural sectors for almost 20 years and has successfully completed numerous practically-relevant research projects at national and international level. Since 2019, she has also been able to bring this experience to bear in her voluntary work as vice president of DLG and chairperson of the DLG Competence Center Food. She is particularly interested in analysing the future trends of the individual value-adding stages of the food supply chain in Germany, especially in the light of digitalisation and the shift of the relevant topic areas towards ecology, animal welfare and sustainability.

MSc. agr. Philipp Schulze Esking, Landwirt, Billerbeck (Nordrhein-Westfalen)

Philipp Schulze Esking
Farmer, Billerbeck (North Rhine-Westphalia)

Born in 1978, Philipp Schulze Esking studied agricultural sciences at the universities in Göttingen and Cordoba (Spain). He has been running his parents' pig fattening and arable farm in Billerbeck since 2005. He also cooperates with four other arable farms. Even during his degree, he demonstrated exemplary commitment in several specialist organisations, including as a member of the European Pig Producers (EPP) and on the Board of Junge ISN (Interessengemeinschaft der Schweinehalter Deutschlands (German pig farmers' interest group)). He was deputy chairperson of the ISN until 2022. Within DLG, he has been a dedicated member of the committee for pig production for a number of years. He is also a member of the DLG Commission and has been a member of the Board of DLG since 2013. He has been vice president of DLG since 2015 and is currently the chairperson of the Competence Center Agriculture. Philipp Schulze Esking is additionally a holder of the International DLG Award.

Dr. Anna Catharina Voges, Saat-Gut Plaußig Voges KG, Leipzig (Saxony)

Dr Anna Catharina Voges
Saat-Gut Plaußig Voges KG, Leipzig (Saxony)

Born in 1978, Dr Anna Catharina Voges, grew up on her family's farm in the vicinity of Hameln. She obtained a degree in general agricultural sciences from the University of Hohenheim. This was followed by a four-year doctorate at Imperial College London, Wye Campus, which she concluded with a PhD in economics. She gained her professional agricultural experience on various farms in North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as well as in Samara, Russian Federation. Anna Catharina Voges has been managing Saat-Gut Plaußig Voges KG, a family-owned agricultural business on the northern outskirts of the city of Leipzig, since 2008. Her work is particularly focused on the issues of agricultural structural change and possible strategic operational adjustments as well as on economics and transparency in agricultural business management. She is a member of the Board of Familienbetriebe Land und Forst Sachsen und Thüringen e.V. (family-run agricultural and forestry companies, Saxony and Thuringia). She has been a member of the DLG Commission since 2017 and the DLG Young Talent Award Commission since 2018; she was appointed chairperson of the DLG Feldtage expert advisory board in 2023. 

 Ulrich Westrup Farmer, Bissendorf (Lower Saxony)

Ulrich Westrup
Farmer, Bissendorf (Lower Saxony)

Born in 1971, Ulrich Westrup is a farmer and a state-examined agricultural business manager. He lives in Bissendorf (Lower Saxony), where he manages a roughly 800-hectare mixed farm with dairy cattle, including 156 hectares of grassland, biogas and arable land, together with his partners. As managing director of Westrup-Koch Milch GbR, he is focused on animal farming as well as training and personnel management. Ulrich Westrup also chairs the supervisory board of the Osnabrueck Herdbook Cooperative (OHG) and has been involved with DLG for some time, including in the Commission and the Main Committee for Agriculture and also as the chairperson of the Committee for Milk Production and Cattle Farming. He was active on the Board of DLG from 2015 to 2018 before becoming the deputy chairperson of the DLG Supervisory Board in 2018. In his voluntary work within DLG, he succeeded in providing important stimuli in the DLG Forum Top Milk Production Farms and DLG Dairy Farming Herd Manager projects as well as the professional thrust of EuroTier, amongst others. In 2018, Ulrich Westrup was presented with the Max Eyth commemorative medal in silver by the Board of DLG for his services to German dairy farming and DLG.