SPD on agriculture

The SPD wants to relieve farmers and winegrowers of red tape and modernize the agricultural administration. For EU farm policy from 2028 on, it calls for a more efficient and practical design that benefits farms directly.

Farmers and winegrowers should spend less time in the office. The SPD wants to review rules and make procedures simpler. All applications should go through one digital platform. EU farm policy should also become simpler.

The agricultural administration is to become more efficient in dialogue with the sector. Documentation duties are to be reduced and duplicate reports eliminated. The core is a central digital platform for applications, reports and permits. Where federal or EU rules are an unnecessary burden in the SPD's view, it wants to push for relief. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is meant to help farms reliably and without bureaucracy.

The SPD wants to keep supporting generational change on farms and expand advice for young farmers and winegrowers. At the same time, the state is to become a leader in digital agriculture by moving research into farms faster.

Young people should be able to take over farms. The SPD wants to give them better advice. Farmers should use more digital technology. New knowledge from universities should reach farms quickly.

The Niederlassungsprämie (start-up premium for young farmers) introduced in the last term is cited as the foundation. Business advice is to grow and especially support those trying new business models and sales channels. Universities conduct research on smart and precision farming; new growing methods and technologies are to be tested in the state first. Training, knowledge transfer and field trials at the Dienstleistungszentren Ländlicher Raum (rural service centers) will be strengthened.

The SPD wants to maintain conventional and organic farming alike and commits to livestock farming in the state. Marketing of regional products with high quality and animal welfare standards is to be promoted.

The SPD wants to keep both kinds of farming: conventional and organic. Animals should keep living on farms. Food from the region should sell better. People should treat food with more care.

According to the program, both forms of farming contribute to food security, the care of cultural landscapes and the survival of family farms. The SPD counts animals on farms as part of rural culture. It links regional production with short distances, transparency, local value creation and climate and resource protection. Producers and consumers are to be brought closer together.

The SPD wants to help wineries through structural change with measures to boost sales and competitiveness. It favors quality over more acreage and wants to increase support for steep-slope viticulture.

The SPD wants to help winemakers. Wine should sell better, also abroad. There should be no new land for vineyards. Vineyards on steep hills should get more money.

The plans include new export markets, more wine marketing, more direct sales and closer links with restaurants and tourism. Part-time winemakers would be allowed to run Straußwirtschaften (seasonal wine taverns). No new vineyard areas would be designated; at the federal level the SPD backs rotational fallow. Advice, help with business succession and socially acceptable solutions for closures would be expanded, and the SPD wants more women to take over wineries. Funding for steep-slope vineyards along the Middle Rhine, Moselle and Ahr would rise markedly, as would money for land consolidation.

The SPD wants to better insure farmers and winemakers against crop losses and promote climate-adapted varieties and growing methods. The platform points to the effects of climate change already felt in fields and vineyards.

The climate is changing. This hits farmers and winemakers. The SPD wants to give more money for insurance against bad harvests. It also wants to support vines that cope well with the new climate.

Subsidies for crop-loss insurance would increase. Robust grape varieties (PIWIs, meaning fungus-resistant varieties) and a switch to resilient, sustainable growing methods would be funded. The SPD plans to invest in research, advice and digitalization in viticulture. A model region called “Zukunftswein” is meant to combine ecological winegrowing, regional value creation and sustainable tourism.