Enlarge image

Tractor demo in Nuremberg: Caught in one's own protest

Photo: Dwi Anoraganingrum / Panama Pictures / IMAGO

Anyone visiting the Green Week in Berlin these days might get the impression that German agriculture is facing a promising future: enthusiastic children climb on gigantic tractors that can run on vegetable oil.

A few meters away there is a solar-powered field robot.

Animal rights activists and farmer representatives are on friendly terms.

But outside, beyond the Berlin exhibition halls, the protests are entering their third week.

Farmers' President Joachim Rukwied threatens that there will be actions until the government presents "an appropriate solution for agricultural diesel."

The lobbyist is caught in his own protest: he has declared a peasant uprising from which he can hardly emerge unscathed.

Because Rukwied has to make it clear to farmers that they can no longer stop changes with tractors.

That animal welfare and climate protection are not just pipe dreams of the Greens.

It's time to leave the tractors on the farms and work on a solution.

Yes, the farmers had good reasons to protest.

The government wanted to cut more than 900 million euros in a cloak-and-dagger operation from a group that already feels misunderstood.

The traffic lights have now been significantly reduced, but it remains a communicative catastrophe.

At the same time, the coalition has been letting all transformation concepts for sustainable agriculture gather dust in the drawers of its ministries for years.

Plans that agricultural associations, environmental and animal protection organizations, trade and science have developed together.

Because the government hasn't presented a concept for so long, the agricultural networks that convince farmers that change can be stopped with loudness have become stronger again.

One mistake: Many farmers prefer to keep to themselves.

In doing so, they would have to talk to those who need them for their future: citizens and consumers.

Then politics can't ignore them either.

There is even a common level: the concern that the upcoming transformation will overwhelm everyone.

What the heating law, the e-car turnaround and the abandonment of Sunday roast are for citizens, is for farmers the complicated fertilizer regulations, the switch to low-emission machines and the sometimes involuntary exit from animal husbandry.

Tractors can be used to put pressure on politicians, make noise and block roads.

You won't win people's understanding and hearts in the long term this way.

This form of protest will wear out and people will be annoyed.

Many citizens are wondering why a profession is protesting for climate-damaging subsidies when it can afford to roll into the capital with tractors estimated to be worth more than a billion euros and burn thousands of liters of diesel in the process.

Instead, farmers should invite people to their farms, even if there is no show stable there yet.

They should tell you about EcoSchemes, Red Areas, GAEC standards and the Animal Welfare and Farm Animal Husbandry Ordinance.

Conversely, city dwellers can talk about the balancing act between home office and office or about efforts to agree on a balcony solar system in an apartment building.

The changes challenge everyone.

We can afford this if everyone participates

Not every farmer wants or manages the change.

On the farms, cows are often still tied up in the stable, the old weed sprayer rumbles across the field, and there is fear about the future.

But the opportunity is now there to explain to people why many farmers are so afraid of transformation.

This abstract term means: taking on 20 or 30 years of debt with a new stable without knowing whether it will still meet the requirements in ten years.

Developing a business plan and completely reorganizing farms.

Sometimes against the will of the parents, throwing overboard everything that they had once built with conviction.

For other farmers, the transformation cannot go fast enough.

They have long had ideas and concepts and cannot implement them because there is a lack of funding or they fail due to outdated regulations.

So there are different starting points for frustration.

What all farmers have in common is that they lack a concept for the future.

That's why Farmer President Rukwied managed to get so many of them onto the streets - whether organic or conventional, large or small farms.

The power of the tractors has worked, the traffic light has completely absorbed some of the cuts, the rest of the cuts are to be made gradually.

Agriculture can cope with whatever is left now.

At the same time, money must flow into future-oriented projects.

It doesn't work without government support, especially for animal owners.

The good news from science is that we can afford it if everyone participates.

Sustainability does not mean that good food becomes unaffordable and agriculture in Germany dies.

But things are getting uncomfortable: small farms will only survive with a profitable business idea; the time for producing for yourself is over.

Animal farmers are under scrutiny because their product is living beings.

Marketing strategies are required; no government intervention will guarantee a price hammock.

Subsidies for environmental services are not a handout, but rather an important service for the common good.

And consumers have to throw supposed certainties overboard: large farms do not automatically mean animal cruelty.

Farmers are not empty recipients of subsidies.

The proportion of academics on the farms is continually increasing.

Agriculture is complex.

The tractor protest could trigger big changes if the farmers and their representatives don't go overboard now.

There is an important point in which farmers' perceptions of themselves and others differ.

They complain about a lack of appreciation and support.

But surveys show that citizens certainly have sympathy for farmers.

You should not gamble away this bonus.