Grüne on agriculture

The Greens want farm subsidies to be paid for environmental and animal welfare services rather than as flat per-hectare payments. In the long run they aim for a common-good premium and a reorientation of EU agricultural policy.

Today farmers get money mostly based on how much land they have. The Greens want to change that. Money should go to protecting nature and animals. The state should use its own support programs for this. Hedges and strips along field edges should also be protected.

According to the platform, flat per-hectare payments mainly benefit large farms and landowners. The programs the state itself defines for rural development and agri-environmental measures are to be used specifically for environmental and animal welfare. Livestock farmers are to get support for higher animal welfare and help with regional marketing. Hedges are to be planted and protected, and municipalities are to get help taking the margins of public paths out of farming. Lower Saxony should closely follow the review of EU funding; the Greens also stand by the EU's Farm to Fork strategy.

The Greens want to secure food supplies globally by strengthening regional agricultural markets in every part of the world. To that end, meat exports should fall, food speculation should be curbed, and the EU's biofuel blending mandate should be dropped.

Poor countries face hunger. The Greens want to support farmers there. Germany should sell less meat to these countries. Grain should no longer end up in fuel tanks. So the rule to mix biofuel into gasoline and diesel should end.

At the international and European level, the platform names releasing seeds as a common good and tightening the EU financial markets directive against food speculation. Poultry exports to Africa are said to have risen by 3,000 percent in ten years, which small farmers there cannot compete with. According to the platform, nine percent of the global crop harvest goes into bioethanol and five percent into biodiesel. A large share of harvests from Latin America and Southeast Asia is fed to animals or burned in Germany, it says.

The Greens want to substantially reduce nitrous oxide and methane emissions from farming. This is to be achieved by using less nitrogen fertilizer, ending factory farming, stopping the plowing of peatland soils, and promoting humus build-up and organic farming.

Farming releases a lot of greenhouse gases. The Greens want to cut them sharply. Farmers should use less fertilizer. Factory farming should end. Peatland should no longer be plowed for crops. Organic farms should get more support.

Instead of cropland, peatland is to be used as low-intensity grassland with high water levels or for paludiculture, meaning farming on wet soils. Permanent grassland is to be preserved and restored because it stores more carbon than cropland. Farming methods that build up humus are to receive special support. Fertilizer use is to be monitored more effectively. The exhaust air filter requirement that already applies to large pig barns is to be extended to large poultry barns.

The Greens want to help farms adjust to the consequences of climate change. The focus is on adapted water management, erosion protection and drought-tolerant crops.

Climate change brings drought and heavy rain. This hits farmers. The Greens want to help them. Water should stay on the fields. Farmers should irrigate in a water-saving way. Crops should cope better with dry weather.

Support is planned for growing drought-resistant crops and for measures against soil loss from wind and water. Sites at particular risk are to be used as grassland, and windbreak hedges are to be planted. Together with farmers, the Greens want to make sure water stays in the landscape, enough areas are available for it to seep away, and more water can be retained. In the platform's view, more diversified farms get through crises better than specialized ones.

The Greens want to link the number of animals kept to the available land and to lower it, especially in western Lower Saxony. Farms are to get help reducing herds, converting barns for better animal welfare, and voluntarily leaving livestock farming.

Some areas have very many farm animals. This creates too much manure for the fields. The Greens want fewer animals per area of land. Farmers get help if they keep fewer animals. They also get help for better barns. Big livestock farms should pay more into the animal disease fund.

The platform argues that only land-based livestock farming allows manure to be used locally according to need and without harming groundwater. A funding program is to let farms voluntarily switch, partly or fully and permanently, to other lines of farming, provided they do not enter another form of intensive livestock farming. The Greens welcome the federal plan to tie barn construction subsidies more closely to how animals are kept. Contributions to the Tierseuchenkasse (animal disease fund) are to reflect the risk arising from herd size and animal density, and disease prevention is to be strengthened.

The Greens want to greatly reduce the use of pesticides in Lower Saxony and to draw up the reduction strategy agreed in the Niedersächsischer Weg (a state agreement on nature conservation). At the federal level they push for a pesticide levy, and in the EU for stricter approvals.

Farmers use pesticides. These are chemicals against pests and weeds. Traces of them turn up in drinking water. The Greens want far fewer pesticides. They will make a plan for Lower Saxony. People who use pesticides should pay a fee.

The platform bases the demand on growing findings of pesticides and their breakdown products in drinking water. The reduction is to apply to farming, horticulture and other land. The FINKA project, in which conventional farms work with neighboring organic farms, is to be extended statewide. The Greens welcome the federal plan to ban glyphosate by the end of 2023 at the latest and to extend the restrictions in nature reserves to water protection areas.

The Greens want to move enforcement of environmental rules such as fertilizer and pesticide law from the Chamber of Agriculture to another state authority. Fees for food and feed inspections are to be revised to ease the burden on small craft businesses.

Today the Chamber of Agriculture checks whether farmers follow environmental rules. But the chamber also speaks for farmers. The Greens want to separate this. Another authority should do the checks. Small businesses should pay lower fees for inspections.

As the platform describes it, the Chamber of Agriculture is both the profession's self-governing body and a carrier of official inspection duties. Moving the responsibility is meant to separate the two more clearly. Fee rates for inspections of food, feed and processing businesses are to be redrawn in line with EU law. From the party's point of view, the aim is fairer fees.

The Greens want to preserve grassland in Lower Saxony and introduce a grazing premium for that purpose. The platform argues that grassland stores carbon, protects water from phosphate and matters for biodiversity.

The Greens want to keep meadows and pastures. Farmers should get money when their animals graze outside. Meadows are good for the climate and for many animals.

A grazing premium is planned. The pasture milk program is to be expanded and extended to products such as yogurt and cheese. A new funding program for low-intensity livestock farming on peat soils and support for labeling pasture-raised meat are added. The Greens also back flexible regulation of milk volumes as proposed by the Bund Deutscher Milchviehhalter (dairy farmers' association). Under the meadow bird protection program, effective measures are to be paid considerably better.

The Greens want an agricultural structure law that gives local farms a strong right of first refusal on farmland over non-farming investors, along with a price brake. In the platform's view, active farmers are currently losing out to financial investors on the land market.

Farmland keeps getting more expensive. Investors buy land too. The Greens want a new law. Local farmers should get to buy land first. Prices should stop rising so fast.

The right of first refusal is to apply to local farms and to cooperatives that lease land to organic farms. A price brake is to be added. A start-up program for future farmers is planned to ease farm handovers outside the family. The platform names competition from financial investors and rising lease prices as the problem.

The Greens want to raise the share of organic farming from 5.2 percent today to at least ten percent by 2025 and at least 15 percent by 2030. The platform treats organic farming as its model because it is said to protect soil, groundwater, species and the climate and to create rural jobs.

The Greens want more organic farming. Today it is about 5 percent. By 2030 it should be at least 15 percent. Organic farmers use no artificial fertilizers or pesticides. The state should serve organic food in its cafeterias.

The basis is the Niedersächsischer Weg (a state agreement on farming and nature) with its targets for 2025 and 2030. Funding is to focus on the first two years of conversion, and processing and marketing infrastructure such as organic dairies and slaughter facilities is to improve. State-run cafeterias are to switch to organic food, and a Lower Saxony organic label is considered. An organic farming action plan with the associations, an information campaign and priority for organic use of publicly owned leased land are added. Training, research and continuing education are to focus more on organic farming.

The Greens want Lower Saxony to remain a region where no genetically modified crops are grown. They reject public funding for commercial research on agricultural genetic engineering.

The Greens want no genetically modified crops on the fields. That should stay as it is today. The state should not pay for such research by companies. Farmers should grow more protein-rich feed at home.

Lower Saxony is to remain a GMO-free region. A protein strategy is to promote growing domestic protein-rich feed crops so that less soy is imported as animal feed. Commercial research on agricultural genetic engineering is to receive no public funding.

The Greens want to keep supporting fish farming in aquaculture but make it more ecological. EU fisheries funds are to go specifically to sustainable and innovative facilities.

Many fish come from fish farms. The Greens want these farms to be better for nature. The water should stay clean. The fish should have more room. EU money should help with that.

Regional production and marketing are to keep receiving support. The platform names closed recirculation systems with water treatment and feed largely free of fishmeal, fish oil and imported soy as worth funding. Lower stocking densities and doing without harmful chemicals and antibiotics are treated as requirements. Traditional pond farming and the few river fisheries are to be preserved and supported.

The Greens want to strengthen coastal fishing with a political strategy and keep tying fisheries funding to high environmental standards. Fish stocks are to be secured and rebuilt, and the party wants to push for effective marine protection at the federal level.

The Greens want to help fishers on the coast. They should fish in a gentle way. Shrimp should be peeled locally and not in Morocco. Small harbors should stay reachable. The sea should be better protected.

Local shrimp peeling is to be supported, for example through ultrasound peeling in the cutter harbors, so that transports to Morocco end and fishers earn adequate prices. Coastal fishers are to get help modernizing their fleet, switching to gentler fishing methods and adopting low-emission engines. The state is to stay active in the Zukunftskommission Fischerei (commission on the future of fishing). Small cutter harbors that are silting up are to remain accessible.

The Greens want to lower antibiotic use in livestock farming and move oversight back to the state level. Reserve antibiotics are to be banned in fattening because the platform sees resistant germs as a danger to human health.

Fattened animals get a lot of antibiotics. These are drugs against bacteria. That makes them work less well for people. The Greens want less of them in barns. The state should check this itself. Especially important antibiotics should be banned for fattening.

The platform wants to build on the 2014 strategy, when a monitoring unit existed at the state office LAVES. The task currently lies with the counties, which the Greens say lack staff and expertise. In the future, reducing use is to be a state responsibility again. For reserve antibiotics, which serve as a last resort in human medicine, the party calls for a ban in fattening.

The Greens want to advise cafeterias on using more organic products and launch a state program for school meals. Schools and daycare centers would offer more plant-based food. A state nutrition strategy is to be put into practice.

Many people eat in a cafeteria every day. The Greens want more organic food there. Cafeterias should get advice for this. The state should support good food in schools. Schools and daycare centers should offer more plant-based food.

The party wants cafeteria food to be good, healthy, regionally produced where possible and fairly priced. The program cites Copenhagen's "House of Food" and Berlin's "Kantine Zukunft" as models that guide large kitchens through the changeover. The advice would be open to cafeterias of all kinds, from daycare centers to companies. Local food policy councils in cities and towns would be involved in carrying out the nutrition strategy.

The Greens want less food to be thrown away, from harvest to store. They support federal and EU initiatives to decriminalize dumpster diving and to revise the best-before date.

A lot of food ends up in the trash. The Greens want to change that. Crooked vegetables should be sold too. Dumpster diving means taking food from store trash bins. This should no longer be a crime.

The party wants to promote approaches such as bags of rescued food, discounted surprise bags shortly before closing time, local food-sharing stations and food banks. A prize would go to especially novel projects. Leeway in marketing standards would be used so that misshapen vegetables and harvest leftovers also find buyers. Pilot projects to cut waste are planned in out-of-home catering, for example in school meals.