German Bundestag, September 8, 2022, Plenarprotokoll 20/51,
pp. 5559-5560.
Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Right honorable Frau
President. Right honorable Herr Minister.
The Agriculture Ministry’s budget has in the last years
regrettably received much too little attention. In the present crisis at the
latest is shown how destructive was this assessment.
Right honorable Herr Minister, you in your speech in June of
this year recounted that we needed changes, pragmatic solutions and planning
security for the farmers – all demands to which my delegation colleagues and I
directly subscribe. Yet honestly said, when I look at the numbers in your
estimate, I see absolutely nothing of this. You simply continue to administer
the status quo, otherwise nothing. And that in these times is a fatal policy.
What do the numbers show us? The biggest plus – and generally
the only plus worthy of the name – is booked in the Agricultural Social Policy
chapter. Sound good? Yes? I certainly see how the Ampel coalition writes this on the flag. It however is a fallacy;
since this has nothing to do with your policy. That of course is reflected in the
law’s mostly automatically advanced addition. Otherwise said: Here, your
ministry certainly has no discretion; these numbers need be reset.
Note well, this plus comes in that there was a powerful
minus last year. Here, where you within this chapter in fact have freedom of
action, perhaps in regards the funding of the Agricultural Accident Insurance,
you have again decided for less expenditures, contrary to the express and now
so often repeated demands from the side of the farmers, from the Accident
Insurance itself, and from our delegation. You still prefer to hang an
additional millstone around the neck of the farmers – in these times, an
absurdity.
If your draft budget is further browsed, it is confirmed: It
works according to the principle “left pocket, right pocket”. Many titles are
simply re-parked and abbreviated; as for example with the special area plan “Promotion
of Rural Development”: Whack – 30 million euros gone. This 30 million euros
then lands in insect protection. Who believes that thereby operates any special
nature conservation is disillusioned. No, the greater part of the extra
expenditure will be employed so as to moderate the extra costs in regards the
farmers which arise due to the provisions of the insect protection – the extra
costs which you impose on the farmers themselves. Find the error!
A further example are the well-known expenditures for the
community exercise “Improvement of Rural Structures and Coastal Protection”,
GAK. Here, from the total title, 150 million euros will be withdrawn so as then
in the GAK area to re-designate them with the new name of “Animal Welfare
Reconstruction” – once again “left pocket, right pocket”. What exactly this new
re-naming means, one can only riddle. It appears to me as if generally where “eco”
and “animal welfare” is to the fore, a bit of money has been simply shifted so
as to manage a little greenwashing – greenwashing: That in the Green doctrine
sounds good, yet is fatal for the farmers. The best example of that is provided
by the so-called aids for farmers. Here, the aids will be unnecessarily tied to
the so-called greening premium. Here, the German government in Brussels is
again more papal than the pope. However, it can also therein lie that your
priorities are somewhat otherwise set than as with the rest of the population.
I thereby mean your statement, Herr Özdemir, “…it may”, meaning hunger, “not be
misused as an argument to make cuts in bio-diversity and climate protection”.
Herr Minister, who in all seriousness puts climate
protection ahead of the avoidance of hunger falsely sets his priorities.
Something like that is simply destructive.
I certainly do not want to get started on the idling of
acreage, the crop rotation and the eternal attendant procrastination, and also
not on what this one-time exception with umpteen buts means for the farmers’
planning security.
That the Federal government is completely de-coupled from
reality is also shown by your answer to the AfD delegation’s inquiry of a few
days ago. Questioned as to the consequences if ever more fertilizer
manufacturers close their plants, nevertheless came the serious answer – I
cite: The substantial consequences for the domestic agriculture’s fertilizer
supply are still not recognized. The
development of the gas prices and the reactions of the fertilizer industry
referent to this continue to be closely observed.
Ladies and gentlemen, for the farmers, that is just bare-faced scorn!
On other pages you plan almost 25 million euros of extra
spending for the Agriculture Ministry and the subordinate officials, and all of
that after already in June of this year, with the budget for 2022, you prepared
an entire 80 million euros extra for this administrative apparatus. That means
that in the good half year since you undertook the ministry, the expenditures
for your ministry and its subordinate officials alone grew by fully 100 million
euros. Those are your real priorities.
Dear Ampel, finally
wake up! We are stuck in a crisis, and we cannot permit ourselves to dream and
to administer the status quo. Outside in the real world, the prices are going
through the roof. Not only the farmers no longer see a future. If here nothing
is done,
Vice-president
Yvonne Magwas: Please come to a conclusion.
Gero Clemens Hocker (FDP): Yes, please!
we will awake in a Germany which we simply cannot imagine.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
