Farmers announce “fierce resistance” to agricultural cuts – trouble in the coalition

2023-12-15 14:32:07

There is a heated argument in the traffic light coalition about who is responsible for the planned removal of the agricultural diesel subsidy. The FDP accused Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir (Greens) of having suggested this himself. The Ministry of Agriculture denied this and stated that the FDP-led Finance Ministry was responsible. Union parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz (CDU) criticized the plans as “politics against people in rural areas”. The plans call for the tax breaks on agricultural diesel for farmers to be abolished.

The President of the German Farmers’ Association, Joachim Rukwied, considers the project unacceptable and called it a “declaration of war” on German farming families. “The federal government obviously has no interest in functioning and competitive agriculture in Germany. “That would be a further massive burden on our operations and would greatly weaken our European competitiveness,” he said. All political decision-makers must be aware that a deletion would further drive structural change and make food significantly more expensive. The farmers’ association has called for demonstrations on Monday. The first farmers are said to have already demonstrated.

Ministry of Agriculture denies the accusation

The food policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Gero Hocker, told the “Bild” newspaper on Friday that the abolition of subsidies for agricultural diesel and the end of the vehicle tax exemption for agricultural and forestry vehicles “would be a hard double blow for agriculture.” . However, there is a certain irony in the Agriculture Minister now shedding crocodile tears over a result that he himself had demanded. “The green proposal was introduced by Cem Özdemir, rated as effective by Robert Habeck and was the only way it found its way into the relief budget.”

The Ministry of Agriculture denied the accusation. A spokesman told the “Bild” newspaper that the Ministry of Food “has never made such a proposal.” As part of the internal budget preparation in the middle of the year, the Ministry of Finance instead raised the question of agricultural diesel subsidies for the first time in order to compensate for savings targets for future budgets from 2025. The Ministry of Agriculture then promised the Ministry of Finance “to examine a revision (not deletion!) of the agricultural diesel subsidy” if these freed-up funds continue to benefit the transformation tasks in agriculture.” However, this approach was not pursued further because the burden on agriculture was too high.

After the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling, Federal Minister Özdemir “expressly warned during the internal consultations against canceling agricultural diesel subsidies and depriving agriculture of these funds,” the “Bild” newspaper quoted the ministry spokesman as saying. After the budget agreement, the minister criticized that he considered the removal of subsidies to be “problematic”.

Anne Kokenbrink Published/Updated: Recommendations: 28 Niklas Zimmermann Published/Updated: Recommendations: 28 Rüdiger Soldt Published/Updated: Recommendations: 23

The Bavarian Economics Minister and Free Voters leader Hubert Aiwanger called the removal of the subsidies in the “Augsburger Allgemeine” a “slap in the face of the farmers.” Anyone who classifies the production of food as climate-damaging work is “a danger to this country”. If the tax breaks for agricultural diesel were eliminated, agricultural businesses would face additional burdens of an average of several thousand euros per year, depending on their diesel consumption and the size of the business. Diesel consumption tends to be higher on organic farms because operations such as chopping weeds require more working hours with the tractor.