AfD on agriculture

The AfD wants to treat conventional and organic farms alike and rejects favoring particular types of farms. Farmers would be relieved of documentation and reporting duties, and regional production and marketing would receive a large share of economic development funding.

The AfD wants to support all farms equally. Organic farms should have no advantage over other farms. Farmers should have less paperwork. The state should give more support to regional food.

In the AfD's view, prices should form on the market; subsidies that favor certain farm types distort competition. The platform states that farmers spend up to three times as much time on bureaucracy as an average mid-sized business. Structures for producing and marketing traditional, regional products would get a substantial share of economic development funds. Genetic research for trials and safety studies would also be allowed with little administrative effort. The AfD further sees farmers as carriers of tradition and custom and as important for reviving rural areas.

The AfD wants to end the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the long run and have farm policy decided by Germany alone. It also rejects the EU Nature Restoration Regulation. The party argues this would cut red tape and allow subsidies to be targeted better.

Today the EU decides a lot about farming. The AfD wants to change that. Germany should decide about farming on its own again. The AfD is also against an EU law to protect nature. It says the law hurts farmers.

As a first step, the AfD wants to use the conference of agriculture ministers to launch a feasibility study on a system change in farm subsidies. The platform calls requirements under the EU Green Deal overreaching. It says the Nature Restoration Regulation is too costly for farmers, that its funding is unclear and its deadlines unworkable, and it sees risks to food production. Through the Bundesrat, the federal government is to be urged to use the new majorities in the European Parliament to get the law changed.

The AfD calls for a new agricultural structure law that gives farmers from the region priority in access to farmland. Land speculation and the concentration of large areas among a few owners are to be stopped. The platform argues that only farmers rooted in the area support village life.

The AfD wants a new law about farmland. Farmers from the region should get land more easily. A few owners should not hold very much land. Outside investors should have a harder time.

The law is meant to regulate purchases and leases so that regional family farms are protected. Land and farm policy would take priority over investors who, as the platform puts it, are only after profit. For land held by the BVVG, the federal company managing formerly state-owned farmland in eastern Germany, the AfD also wants to push for sales to farmers from the region.

The AfD wants to relieve farmers and livestock keepers of costs and regulations. The Wassercent (water levy) on irrigation water would be dropped, fertilizer rules loosened and all livestock regulations reviewed. Keeping farm animals privately is also to become easier.

The AfD wants to ease the load on farmers. Water for the fields should no longer carry a fee. Farmers should decide for themselves how much fertilizer to use. The AfD wants to check the rules for keeping animals. It should also be easier to keep chickens or a pig at home.

On fertilizer, the party rejects rules that in its view leave crops undersupplied and relies on farmers' expertise; manure is to be used regionally and not imported from other countries. The platform describes the water levy as a cost driver that makes food more expensive. It says livestock regulations and free trade agreements make local products less competitive. For private keepers, the AfD announces fewer notification duties and easier housing requirements. Shepherds should be able to live off their animals again; an expanded per-animal premium is described as only one building block.