I am not prepared to continue to accept an exploitative system!
Government policy statement delivered by Federal Minister Cem Özdemir in the German Bundestag
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Ladies and Gentlemen,
Last Sunday - looking ahead to our debate today - the ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung’ newspaper dedicated almost two pages to an article entitled “farmers at breaking point”. I warmly recommend this article to all of you in this hall: it reports on the enormous pressure farmers are facing, economically, physically and mentally. Hard work, concerns about their income, and even hostility instead of recognition.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are talking about the people who put food on our tables every day. Our farming sector affects all of us, we all benefit from the outstanding work carried out on our farms, and we all live off this work, in the truest sense of the word.
The pricing debate
Since this affects all of us, things quickly get personal, emotional and at times also quite simplistic. I am pleased about the current debate. If we discuss the issues seriously, the debate will help make us aware of all that the agricultural sector provides. We need to make progress and leave the outrage economy behind us. The solution is not to just take pen in hand and walk through supermarkets crossing out the prices and replacing them with higher ones. But we should also not pretend that farmers getting a mere 22 cent for every euro that customers spend on pork is ok and the way things have to be.
I am not willing to continue to accept an exploitative system at the expense of humans, animals, the environment and the climate!
What are the stakes?
- Firstly, it is a matter of ensuring that everybody gets high quality and affordable food.
- And secondly, that farmers should be able to earn their living from their work AND receive the appreciation they deserve.
- And thirdly, it is a matter of protecting the climate, the environment and biodiversity and ensuring that animals are treated humanely.
My chief concern is to bring these three aims together. Because they are linked to an important social objective: wherever they are, farmers work with great commitment in and for rural areas. Strengthening farms therefore also strengthens social cohesion.
Animal Welfare
If you farm livestock, you are also obliged to care for them as well as you can. Instead of making the housing fit the animals, we have made animals fit their housing in order to squeeze out the very last efficiency gains. Animal stalls are not warehouses! In the coalition agreement, we resolved to support farmers in converting their livestock farming systems. We want to do so this year by introducing a transparent and mandatory animal welfare label! If the animals are healthier, then this needs to benefit farmers' wallets as well.
Food market
And to this end, we will look at value creation along the entire food chain. We want to stop asymmetries that disadvantage producers. Let's be honest: agricultural policies must of course be socially compatible, but they cannot replace social policies. I don’t believe in playing groups off against each other. Our coalition will pursue both good social policies AND good agricultural policies.
Food and nutrition strategy
Food and nutrition policies are social policies. We are not willing to accept that low-earners have a significantly higher statistical risk of suffering from chronic illnesses and hence losing out on opportunities in life. And, looking at it positively, offering workers in canteens and children at schools good food is also a sign of appreciation. My Ministry is not only the Ministry of Agriculture; it is also the Ministry of Food. Eating healthily is the basis for being healthy - for all of us; we therefore plan to immediately set about developing a food and nutrition strategy.
The aim is:
- to reduce sugar, fat and salt in our products;
- to significantly reduce food waste;
- to promote regional and organic food in communal catering facilities; and
- to carry out model region projects to bring the topic of good food closer to citizens.
Climate crisis
The farming and forestry sectors also play a pivotal role in tackling the climate crisis. They are badly affected by extreme droughts, freak weather and the shift in the seasons while, at the same time, being drivers of the climate crisis due to feed imports from the tropics, ever increasing intensification and the use of energy-intensive pesticides and mineral fertilisers. They need to be part of the solution by starting to leverage the potential to capture and store carbon. Specific projects under the coalition agreement include the protection of peatland, targeted humification, climate-resilient forest conversion, the planting of new forests and the renewal of old ones as well as the strengthening of regional cycles.
And we have agreed to achieve 30 per cent organic farming by 2030. And not just in terms of land area, but also on supermarket shelves. We will set out a new strategy for this. It is true that organic farming remains our guiding vision - fewer pesticides, less fertiliser and more nature.
Farmers and their role as independent entrepreneurs
I don't want to preach; I want to empower farmers and bolster the problem-solving skills that farmers already have. Our efforts in this regard will include submitting a strategy during this legislative term on how we want to develop the CAP to provide better rewards for voluntary services rendered for climate, environment and society. My aim is to strengthen farmers’ self-determination. And farmers will also have planning predictability, which they have not had to date. The times of false friends among politicians, who claim to protect farmers from regulations made in Brussels - such as the nitrate pollution of our groundwater - are over. The coalition has agreed on taking all necessary measures to settle the ongoing infringement procedure.
We want to protect the climate and species diversity. This applies to Germany, but naturally also to the rest of the world, or else we would lose our credibility. We are going about things the wrong way if we demand climate stewardship in our own country but fail to see what is happening in upstream production. It is precisely for this reason that deforestation-free supply chains were included in the coalition agreement.
We resolved in the coalition agreement to set some big wheels in motion. But fortunately, we do not have to reinvent the wheel. The Commission on the Future of Agriculture and the Commission on Improvements in Livestock Farming have developed good ideas. What has been lacking so far is a strategy that has been seen through to the end. We will be taking decisions during this legislative period.
Colleagues, our work here in the Bundestag will be crucial. I am counting on you. Let us, in this House, in our policies and in our discussions with our citizens, give the same status to food and agriculture that food has in our daily lives! This is my aim, and I look forward to working with you!
Thank you very much!
location: Berlin
