For the protesting German farmers, the measure of success seems straightforward: how big will their nationwide demonstration in Berlin be on Monday? Will there be only a few hundred tractors, a few thousand farmers, or will Unter den Linden be populated by tens of thousands of demonstrators and many thousands of agricultural vehicles?
Moreover, on Tuesday and Wednesday the Agricultural Committee of the Bundestag will meet, on Thursday the ministers of the sixteen federal states will discuss the austerity proposals, and the Green Week will start in Berlin this coming weekend. In short, many German farmers had already planned to travel to Berlin this week.
Last week, at about ten regional events, many thousands of vehicles traveled on highways to busy traffic junctions in various German cities. German agricultural organizations do have an overarching federal Farmers' Association (DBV), but they are mainly organized regionally by federal state. Their organizational and mobilization strength lies on the state level.
This regional distribution has a “dampening” effect in German politics in this case. Many tasks and powers (and budgets!) are assigned to the sixteen state governments. Federal Minister for Food and Agriculture Cem Özdemir (Greens) is indeed a federal minister, but for many of his decisions, he needs the cooperation of the sixteen BMEL (Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture) ministers from the federal states.
And those ministers come from different political parties: at present, in six federal states a CDU/CSU member holds the Agriculture portfolio. Thus, there is little scope for mutual recriminations within the nationwide BMEL policy between coalition and opposition, between red-yellow-green and black.
Admittedly, the Greens and the FDP liberals are mainly the scapegoats for disappointed farmers, but Ă–zdemir often counters this by referring to the fact that in the past fifty years, it was mainly CDU ministers who, with the consent of the SPD, shaped German agricultural policy. And in his words: especially did not shape it.
That modernization is needed in German livestock farming and agriculture and horticulture is something many agricultural entrepreneurs agree on: this necessity has been clearly demonstrated by the Borchert Future Commission (read: the German Johan Remkes). And this need does not come only from Berlin or Brussels demands for biodiversity, animal welfare, climate, or the Green Deal.
However, German politics still has not agreed on how such an agricultural transition should be financed. At the checkout? Or should the meat companies, supermarkets, and chemical industry invest a part of their billions in profits back into food production?
The German agricultural sector has functioned quite well in recent years but, like other EU countries, must expect less income support in the coming years. And there is still a significant backlog to overcome: see nitrate pollution and manure processing. Moreover, the German economy is less well positioned than in other EU countries. New annual and quarterly figures will be published in Berlin over the next two weeks; Germany might be entering a recession.
The German coalition's popularity is poor. Radical political and agricultural groups try to hijack the debate on agricultural diesel. Truck drivers and train operators have already gone on strike; the farmers are now taking to the streets. Under this unfavorable situation, Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition must try over the next two weeks to push a billion-euro austerity through the Bundestag. For the traffic-light coalition, it could also be a matter of do or die….