The halls are decked with flowers and loops of sausages and salami hang from the rafters. There are baby farm animals to cluck at and grown men show off hairy, winter-white thighs in their embroidered leather shorts. Yes, indeed, this is how the German countryside comes to town for Berlin’s annual “Grüne Woche” or “Green Week” trade fair.
Only this year, the country folk haven’t been quite so delightfully Arcadian. There’s traditionally a convoy of tractors in town for the event in support of good environmental causes. But this Green Week, the rustic road hogs have been way more menacing. Farmers have been driving heavy machinery into the central city to protest against government policies.
From early January onwards, long lines of tractors, forklifts and lorries have made for an impressive spectacle outside federal government buildings, as well as some gnarly traffic jams. As many as 100,000 tractors and 30,000 demonstrators were involved in protests around the country.
And it wasn’t always pretty. At one stage, manure was dumped on those bad city slickers’ streets. Earlier, angry farmers confronted Robert Habeck, the Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, as he was returning from holiday. His family literally had to flee a 300-strong pitchfork-wielding mob.
Agriculture doesn’t account for as much of Germany’s national income as it does in New Zealand. In 2022, it amounted to 0.9% of gross domestic product. Nonetheless, the sector employs about 4.4 million people and is worth around €218 billion (NZ$390b) annually. So farmers remain a powerful lobby group.
They say there’s too much bureaucracy and too many rules right now and that prices for their products – as dictated by retail giants – are too low. They’ve been even more upset by recently announced plans to scrap a subsidy on agricultural diesel and do away with tax breaks on farm vehicles.
The Germans are not the only enraged agronomists. Farmers’ protests have taken place in the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, France and Spain. Just as in Germany, almost all of them have centred on new rules around environmental protection, including irrigation controls, restrictions on nitrogen emissions from livestock, and pesticide use.
“To conventional farmers, every new ‘greening’ rule, every new obligation to improve animal welfare or more conservative fertiliser use means a possible cut in income, be it through different land use, mandatory investments or more time-consuming procedures,” German media outlet Clean Energy Wire explained.
At the same time, climate change obviously also affects European farmers’ livelihoods. Droughts, heatwaves, wildfires and flooding are all headline-making issues, but so are less noticeable changes like the drop in insect pollination, soil degradation and biodiversity loss.
So, why won’t farmers everywhere agree to new pro-environmental rules such as the reduction in diesel subsidies? It seems the right thing to do. But any answer to this question is complex.
Just one example: Germany wants 20% of its arable land farmed organically by 2030. But as one farmer at the tractor convoy outside the Green Week fair last month pointed out, organic farming requires more cultivation, not less, and environmentally friendly alternatives to diesel are scarce or too expensive. Others argued that although they agree environmental protection is important, legislative changes need to be gradual so they can stay in business.
The European Environment Agency has another, more fundamental, answer, insisting we must all “rethink” agriculture. It “plays a fundamental role in the transition towards sustainability”, the agency argues. “There is value in seeing agriculture as a caretaker of rural communities, the environment and our food – rather than simply an economic sector.”
