BSW on agriculture

The BSW rejects additional burdens on farmers and wants to keep the tax breaks on agricultural diesel. Bureaucracy and documentation duties should shrink, and farm subsidies should become simpler. At the federal level the party advocates ending Grundsteuer A (the property tax on farm and forest land).

The BSW wants to ease the load on farmers. Diesel for farmers should stay cheaper. Farmers should have fewer forms to fill out. Subsidies should be easier to get. The property tax on farm land should go.

The platform refers to 55 proposals for cutting red tape made by the state farmers' association in February 2024. Duplicate documentation and repeated data collection should end, and requirements such as crop rotation, set-aside and minimum soil cover should become simpler. The joint federal-state funding scheme GAK should run for several years instead of one. Grundsteuer A should go because, according to the BSW, it costs more effort than it raises. Further goals are help with adapting to climate and weather, more money for young farmers starting or taking over a farm, support for forestry businesses with bark beetle damage instead of threatened penalties, and long-term legal certainty.

The BSW wants to reduce farmers' dependence on large dairies, large slaughterhouses and food corporations. To that end, regional structures for production, processing and marketing should be built up, backed by long-term funding programs.

The BSW wants farmers to depend less on big corporations. Food should be made and sold in the region. The path from farm to customer should be short. There should be long-term funding for this.

The platform speaks of an oligopoly of food corporations, meaning the market power of a few large players, which it wants to break up. Short and transparent supply chains should lower dependence on the world market and secure food supply. In the BSW's view, regional economic cycles in farming and industry promote stability, local ties and ecological balance. As framework conditions at the federal and EU level, the party names price stability and protective tariffs on certain farm imports.

The BSW wants to reform the land market and pass a farm structure law so that farmland goes first to local farmers. State-held BVVG land should be transferred to Brandenburg and leased only to local family farms and cooperatives. The party rejects any further paving-over of farmland.

The BSW wants to secure farmland for farmers from the region. Investors should not make money by trading farmland. There should be a new law for this. Federal land should go to the state of Brandenburg. Farmland should no longer be built on.

The platform calls access to land the decisive question for the future of farming and criticizes the failure of the state government's farm structure law. It says purchase and lease prices have risen sharply, especially around Berlin, and outside investors with no farming background are buying into farms. The BVVG manages formerly state-owned East German land for the federal government; this land should pass to state control. No more agricultural land should be sealed.

The BSW wants to give livestock farms much stronger support through a master plan and reduce their burdens. For wolves, beavers and cormorants, the party calls for active wildlife management with financial compensation for damage and the option to intervene when there is danger.

The BSW wants to help farmers with animals more. There should be a big plan for this. Wolves, beavers and cormorants sometimes cause damage. Farmers should get money for that. When there is danger, action against these animals should be allowed.

In the BSW's view, the burdens cause animal production to move to countries with lower animal welfare standards and wage dumping. The platform justifies wildlife management with the population growth required by EU environmental policy. Interventions should spare the species as a whole and be permitted when livestock, dikes or waterways are at risk. Farming and landscape management associations should be consulted as early as nature conservation groups.