Cem Özdemir wants to enable farmers to grow more wheat

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Wheat harvest in Lower Saxony (2018): Özdemir wants to postpone soil protection rules by one year

Photo: Julian Stratenschulte/ dpa

In view of the tense grain markets due to the Ukraine war, Federal Minister of Agriculture Cem Özdemir wants to enable farmers to produce more wheat.

In addition, he is working in Brussels to postpone new regulations for changing arable crops, said the Greens politician in the Bundestag.

"This means that wheat can be grown on wheat during this autumn sowing season." The farmers' association welcomed the plans, but called for further steps.

Specifically, it is about EU regulations on soil protection that will take effect in 2023, according to which it is no longer possible to cultivate the same crop two years in a row on the same area.

As a rule, maize or rapeseed would then have to be grown after wheat.

Özdemir's initiative now aims to have the EU Commission determine that this regulation does not have to be fulfilled until 2024 - and not as early as 2023 compared to this year.

This would make farmers' cultivation planning much easier.

Özdemir said about this proposal: “The environment and soil pay a price for this.” However, the compromise is reasonable in relation to necessity.

»The advantage is that we get the few areas for species protection.

Because once these diverse areas have disappeared, there is nothing left to protect." The major task of this time is: "Security of supply and climate protection and species protection.

We have to be measured by that.«

Farmers' President Joachim Rukwied said: "We want to be able to continue growing bread wheat to the same extent as before." The association therefore welcomes the ministry's initiative.

“But that can only be a first step.

We are now awaiting proposals from Brussels and Berlin on how to solve the food crisis.« Winter wheat, which is sown in autumn, is the most important German cereal.

To relieve the farmers, Özdemir has already made it possible, among other things, that grass and plants from certain "ecological priority areas" may be used as fodder this year.

This should mitigate price increases.

However, he opposes further demands from the federal states to be able to do everything again on fallow land and to grow grain there, for example.

In a current hour in the Bundestag, the opposition criticized this course and called for more acreage for grain cultivation, which would also be possible according to the line of the EU Commission.

Union parliamentary group Vice Steffen Bilger (CDU) said that "continue like this" was cynical and unethical.

With its good growing conditions, Germany has a responsibility for the whole world.

The chairman of the state agricultural ministers, Sven Schulze (CDU) from Saxony-Anhalt, spoke of a "first small building block" with regard to Özdemir's EU initiative.

"But that's not all we need by a long shot," said Schulze in the Bundestag.

fdi/dpa