Grüne on agriculture

The Greens want to clearly increase the share of organic farming and raise payments for species and environmental protection on farmland. As a long-term goal, the program names organic management of all fields, meadows, and pastures.

The Greens want more organic farming. Farmers should get more money when they protect nature. For example, for flower strips next to fields. Animals should be kept in ways that suit them.

Reliable organic premiums and more weight for organic farming in training, advisory services, research, and university teaching are meant to raise its share of land. EU farm funds should not fall from 2028, the states should keep deciding how they are used, and environmental services should be rewarded beyond just offsetting lost yields. Support would go to agroforestry, hedges, humus building, robust varieties and breeds, legumes, and landscape care through grazing with sheep and goats. The party wants to do without hybrid breeding and rejects patents on plants and animals.

The Greens want an agricultural structure law to strengthen small and diverse farms and counter the loss of farms. Share purchases in companies that own farmland would be regulated so that land does not go to large investors.

Big companies are buying up farmland. The Greens want a law to limit this. Small farms should be able to stay. Young farmers should be able to start more easily.

So-called share deals, in which investors buy company shares rather than the land itself, would be regulated. Farmland owned by the state and municipalities would be leased according to public-interest criteria so that local farms have access to land. Young farmers and founders would get targeted support, and farm takeovers would become easier. On regulations, the party favors more advice and less red tape, and orchard meadows would receive more support.

The Greens want to gradually end the use of chemical-synthetic pesticides by 2035, starting with herbicides. Substances such as PFAS and glyphosate would be banned and farms inspected more often.

The Greens want no more chemical sprays on fields. This should end by 2035. Weed killers would go first. Glyphosate would also be banned.

The phase-out would begin with weed killers and is meant to lower environmental harm; the program sees pesticides as a major cause of species loss. Problematic substances such as PFAS, glyphosate, and hormone-disrupting chemicals would be consistently prohibited. Inspections of farms under the plant protection law would increase significantly. The fertilizer ordinance should hold polluters responsible and ensure fertilizing according to need. In addition, the party relies on humus building, keeping water in the landscape, and irrigation only where it is ecologically justifiable and unavoidable.

The Greens want to restructure livestock farming so that it follows the animals' needs and ties the number of animals to the land available. Industrial livestock farming is to shrink in order to reduce environmental damage and animal welfare problems.

The Greens want farms to keep their animals better. A farm should only have as many animals as its land can support. There should be fewer very large animal farms. Farms that treat animals well should get public money.

At the federal level, the mandatory animal husbandry label is to be continued. The program calls for bringing back subsidies for animal-friendly barns and their operation, and for a permanent funding source such as an animal welfare levy ("Tierschutzcent"). Land leased out by the state or municipalities should go first to farms that focus on animal welfare. Grazing, especially on permanent grassland, is to take priority over subsidies for building barns. In addition, measures to protect herds are to be funded, and livestock owners are to be compensated generously and without red tape when a wolf attack is suspected.