AfD on agriculture

The AfD wants the nation state rather than the EU to be responsible for agriculture again. Compensation payments to farmers would stay for now but no longer run through the EU. Funding programs would be simplified.

Today the EU decides a lot about farming. The AfD wants Germany to decide this itself again. Farmers should still get money from the state. Applying for it should be easier.

The platform calls funding via the EU cumbersome and expensive; German tax money should not support farmers in other countries. The AfD rejects EU fertilizer rules and rigid fertilizer caps and relies on cooperation with farmers to protect water. It also plans a tax-free risk reserve for farmers, foresters and gardeners, more support for farms in disadvantaged areas and on-time payment of subsidies. The party rejects a fixed target share for organic farming and genetically modified crops.

The state of Saxony would stop selling its farmland and forests and instead lease them long-term to local farms. The AfD wants to curb land speculation and protect local farmers from outside investors.

Saxony owns fields and forests. The AfD wants Saxony to stop selling this land. Local farmers should be able to lease it for a long time. Leasing means using it for a fee. This should stop outside investors from buying up land.

The AfD opposes speculation in farmland and its use for other purposes. Local farmers would be protected from investors who come from neither the area nor the sector. The protection should work without much additional bureaucracy.

The AfD wants Saxony to supply itself with food as far as possible and to keep farming from moving abroad. It would support better conditions for farm animals, regional marketing, and allotment gardeners and small-scale animal keepers.

Saxony should produce much of its own food. For milk and eggs, things should stay as they are. For meat, Saxony should produce more. Farm animals should be kept in better conditions. The AfD also wants to help people with small gardens.

Support would go to keeping pigs on straw bedding, free-stall barns for dairy cattle and pasture grazing; stricter husbandry rules should apply EU-wide so that local farms are not burdened one-sidedly. Feed should come from the region where possible, research and support for protein crops would be expanded, and antibiotics would be used only when veterinary medicine requires it. The AfD wants to back regional value chains, advertising for Saxon products and producer groups. Red tape for small-scale animal breeding and allotment gardens would be cut, especially in building law.