Linke on agriculture

The Left wants diverse agriculture built on regional economic cycles. The market power of large retail chains, dairies and slaughterhouses should be reduced so farmers can negotiate better. The party backs minimum producer prices, for example for milk and meat.

The Left wants to help farmers in Saxony. They should sell more in their own region. Big supermarket chains should have less power. Milk and meat should have minimum prices. That way farmers should earn more.

More produce should be sold directly at the farm, in regional supermarkets, or used in the kitchens of daycare centers, schools and hospitals. The platform points to low wages in agricultural jobs and very low milk and meat prices. Regional cooperative producer groups and community-supported agriculture would be funded, including in public catering, with decentralized processing and direct marketing. Stable supply relationships are meant to avoid transport and thereby also help the climate.

The Left wants a law that bans retailers in Saxony from throwing away food. Following the French model, unsold goods would instead have to be donated, used in agriculture or processed into animal feed.

Stores often throw food away. The Left wants to ban that in Saxony. Stores should donate the food. Or farms can use it. Or it becomes feed for animals.

According to the platform, companies at every stage of the supply chain have been wasting food. The party wants to start with retail and points to France as a model. Throwing food away would be replaced by a duty to donate leftover products, use them in farming or turn them into animal feed.

The Left wants to ban glyphosate on all land throughout Saxony, even though the EU has extended its approval. Mineral fertilizer and pesticide use on fields should also go down. The party also wants to promote climate-friendly forms of land use.

Glyphosate is a weed killer. The Left considers it very toxic. It wants to ban it in all of Saxony. Farmers should also use less artificial fertilizer and fewer sprays. New ways of farming should help the climate.

Until a ban is in place, the existing restrictions on use would be widened and voluntary efforts by municipalities and businesses to manage land without pesticides would be funded. Techniques that protect soil and water would also be supported. As further approaches the platform lists paludiculture on rewetted peatlands, agrivoltaics and agroforestry. These are meant to improve the climate footprint and bring farms extra income.

The Left rejects new genetic engineering methods such as CRISPR/Cas as well as patents on seeds, plants and animals. It wants to prevent the EU from largely dropping labeling for genetically modified organisms. Saxony should commit to staying free of genetic engineering.

Genetic engineering changes the genes of plants and animals. The Left rejects this in farming. It is also against patents on plants and animals. Such products should still carry a label. Saxony should have no genetic engineering in its fields.

Saxony would join the network of GMO-free regions in Europe and declare that neither genetically modified crops in fields nor CRISPR animals in barns will be allowed. The party argues that genetic engineering does not solve hunger, endangers biodiversity and makes producers dependent on corporations. It attributes hunger to unequal distribution of wealth, wars and unfair trade. According to the platform, precaution should take priority over innovation.

The Left calls for an agricultural structure law that slows rising lease and purchase prices for farmland and limits the concentration of land in individual farms. In addition, new soil sealing is to fall step by step to net zero.

Farmland keeps getting more expensive. The Left wants a law that slows the prices. Single farms should not own too much land. Investors from outside farming should buy less land. Also, less ground should be built over.

Investors from outside agriculture would be pushed back, and purchases of shares in farms would have to be reported. The platform cites land take of recently just under 6 hectares a day for transport, housing and raw material extraction. First the data should improve, so that newly sealed land and the potential for building within existing settlements can be assessed. An action program would follow, with compliance checked regularly.