Silvia Bender
State Secretary
Silvia Bender was born in Bonn-Beuel on 9 March 1970 and grew up in Andernach am Rhein. She lives in Berlin and has two sons.
Ms. Bender studied agricultural science at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn, specialising in nature conservation and landscape ecology.
She graduated as an agricultural engineer with a study of the flora and fauna of the Michelsbach valley in the Eifel, including the development of an integrated concept for the use of this area.
After her degree, she assumed responsibility for coordinating the “Lebendige Natur durch Landwirtschaft” (Vibrant Nature through Agriculture) project at the university’s Institute for Agricultural Botany. She then worked as an assistant to the management of Bioland Baden-Württemberg e.V. from 1998-2000.
In 2000, Ms. Bender moved to Berlin. In Berlin, she first worked until 2001, also as assistant to the management, for Biokorntakt GmbH & Co. KG, which specialised in the marketing of grain and meat from organic farms in Brandenburg and adjacent federal states.
From 2001 - 2006, she took up positions at Bioland Bundesverband e.V. and Bioland Brandenburg e.V.. Her remit included management of the Berlin office, public relations and lobbying activities and liaison with processing companies.
For almost two legislative terms of the German Bundestag, Ms. Bender was advisor for rural areas, agriculture and animal protection to the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag.
From 2014, she worked in the Representation of Rhineland-Palatinate to the Federation at the Bundesrat in Berlin, employed as head of division at the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of the Environment, Food, Energy and Forestry. From 2017 until her appointment as State Secretary in Brandenburg on 20 November 2019, she was Head of the Department for Biodiversity at the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) e.V. (Friends of the Earth Germany). Since 2001 she has been a member of the Fördergemeinschaft Ökologischer Landbau Berlin Brandenburg e.V. (Berlin and Brandenburg Association for the Promotion of Organic Farming). She was appointed to the board from 2001 - 2004 and again in 2010. From 2016, she was also a member of the supervisory board of the Biobodengenossenschaft (Bioboden cooperative). With her appointment as State Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Environment and Climate Protection of the Land of Brandenburg in November 2019, she announced that she would resign from both these posts. She held this position until her appointment as State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture in December 2021.
In 2005, Silvia Bender joined Alliance 90/The Greens. From 2016 until November 2019, she was spokesperson for the Land working group on agriculture in Brandenburg.
She is a member of the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) e.V. (Friends of the Earth Germany)
