Farmers prevent agricultural turnaround: tractors in reverse gear

The successful farmers’ protests are primarily damaging to agriculture itself. It is precisely in this sector that the hope for an ecological change lies.

Politicians lose their courage as soon as the tractors start rolling Photo: Carsten Rehder/dpa

After violent farmers’ protests in several European countries, the EU Commission wants to “accommodate” the farmers. A large number of exceptions and softenings are planned when it comes to fallow land, crop rotations, land cover and other ecological standards.

Under the guise of reducing bureaucracy and promising flexibility, garnished by the noble claim of “supporting our farmers in difficult times” (Ursula von der Leyen), the Green Deal is being partially implemented. Agricultural policy in reverse gear. “In the event of adverse weather conditions,” the EU member states will in future be able to decide on their own “temporary exceptions” to ecological requirements. And that’s what they will do, especially since the crisis is the new normal. Bioland Vice President Sabine Kabath warns of “downwards competition”.

The EU Commission’s capitulation to the anger of angry farmers shows how incredibly difficult it is to implement the urgently needed transformation of the agricultural and food system. “We know exactly what should actually be done,” was the motto at a major conference on climate and agriculture in Potsdam last week. But we still don’t do it, one might add. Politicians lose their courage as soon as the tractors start rolling. And the media is using the inflammatory, shimmering protests to showcase politics.

The income situation in agriculture has been relatively good, especially in recent years, and the gradual removal of the agricultural diesel subsidy has been anything but threatening to existence. But the mood in agriculture is much worse than the financial situation. Companies complain about the high level of regulation as well as the enormous amount of bureaucracy. But what is most tormenting is the lack of social recognition.

It is typical that the traffic light chose the agricultural sector to reduce subsidies and not the company car privileges that cost billions or the exemption of aviation from kerosene tax. Agriculture sucks, agriculture is the killer of biodiversity and responsible for high climate emissions. She is a poison sprayer, an animal torturer, and she pollutes our water with fertilizer sprees and gets huge subsidies thrown in at the same time. That’s the negative image in short.

Suffering agriculture

Correct: Agriculture is the culprit. But at the same time she is a victim. Climate change, with 1.48 degrees of warming in 2023, is having a full impact on businesses; they are suffering from droughts and crop losses or fields that were flooded for months in large parts of Germany at the beginning of this year. “How does agriculture want to get through the next decade?” asks climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. The losses in soil fertility and biodiversity, pesticide residues and the worsening water crisis also affect our own sector. In its own interest, it must become more environmentally and climate-friendly and therefore less vulnerable. That means: Every green course correction helps. And vice versa: The rollback triggered by the farmers’ protests is particularly life-threatening for agriculture.

Part of the solution

But agriculture is not only a perpetrator and a victim, a cause and a sufferer. Thirdly, it is also part of the solution. It would therefore be imperative to use the enormous potential of agriculture for transformation: rewetting of the moors, reduction and improvement of animal husbandry, humus build-up, CO₂-Storage in the ground, a different way of dealing with animal excrement, better feeding methods, hedges and flower strips, new forests, open-space photovoltaics on pasture fences and on crops that need shade and hail protection. The possibilities for agriculture to help the climate, environment, biodiversity and energy transition – and your own reputation – are enormous.

The two most important climate and environmental adjustments are the decline in animal populations, accompanied by a more plant-based diet and the rewetting of the moors. 5.5 percent of all greenhouse gases in Germany come from the agricultural use of the more than 900,000 hectares of drained moors. The agricultural scientist Alfons Balmann calculates that the “economic costs of using moorland amount to many times the added value on these areas”.

The potential must therefore be increased and the farmers must be properly rewarded for their services to the common good. This means: environmentally friendly, climate-friendly production methods must be profitable. This demand has been around for decades and is being implemented at a snail-like pace at best.

The social costs of this deportation culminate in a staggering number. At the Potsdam Conference last week, the Potsdam agricultural economist Hermann Lotze-Campen cited conservative calculation models according to which the hidden costs of the global agricultural and food system are estimated at more than 10,000 billion dollars annually. As outrageous as such estimates may be, they still show the magnitude of the disaster and its financial consequences.

But what Lotze-Campen also said: “We can massively reduce these costs. We can halve the nitrogen surplus. We can stop biodiversity loss. We can ensure that the agricultural and food sector becomes a climate sink.”

This requires political stability and a clear objective towards climate- and nature-friendly agriculture. The capitulation of politics, which now wants to slow down the ecological restructuring and wave through a slightly modulated business-as-usual approach, is fatal.