Icking: How to help farmers after drastic increases in water prices?
Created: 04/11/2022, 09:00
By: Andrea Kästle
Exchange of views: Ickinger farmers and community representatives discussed together how farmers can be helped after the drastic increase in water prices.
© Sabine Hermsdorf-Hiss
The municipality of Icking has drastically increased the water price.
For the farmers, who use a lot of water, the increase in costs is detrimental to their livelihoods.
Icking - The municipality of Icking has some construction sites.
Perhaps the biggest is the water network.
Last December, the municipal council drastically increased the water price in order to finance the urgently needed renovation of the pipe system.
For the farmers, who use a lot of water, the increase in costs is detrimental to their livelihoods.
At a meeting, those affected, local councils and representatives of the farmers' association looked for solutions.
Farmers describe their situation
Mayor Verena Reithmann (UBI) said there will be a separate municipal council meeting on the subject at the beginning of May.
In addition, a working group from the committee should deal intensively with it.
Because which of the possibilities that evening, according to the SPD local chair Dr.
Beatrice Wagner, “bunten Strauss” have proven to be the most effective and also practicable, must be checked.
Meanwhile, the gathering gave farmers an opportunity to share their situation.
They have all already had to transfer a first installment of the new fees.
A farmer from Dorfen, who has 50 cows in his barn and who asked not to be named, said: "We don't know how we will be doing in the summer.
We are completely up in the air.” Nobody can predict how the milk price, which is currently over 40 cents per liter, will develop.
The only thing that is clear is that everything else has become noticeably more expensive lately.
The prices for the fertilizer would have tripled, concentrated feed and diesel cost twice as much.
Unlike other industries, farmers could never pass their production costs on to the price of what they sell.
Farmers “not competitive for much longer”
"Under the circumstances, we may not be able to compete for much longer," said Ruth Maria Frech, a farmer from Irschenhausen.
She also has around 50 cows, each of which drinks between 70 and 150 liters of water a day.
The water increase of 170 percent is hardly manageable.
Josef Seidl, an organic farmer from Dorfen with 32 cows and offspring, expressed a similar opinion the day after the meeting: "I don't know how to continue the farm." Seidl gets 52 cents for a liter of milk, and his animals give 180,000 liters a year , he would have to charge 1.6 cents more per liter to absorb the explosion in water costs.
Unfortunately, the individual farmer cannot change the milk price.
"Our hands are tied." So far he has paid 4,000 euros for water a year, in the future it will be 9,000 euros.
"I can't save on water with animals."
Farmers use around 14,000 cubic meters of water a year
That evening it became clear that the municipality of Icking had to act urgently.
If only because - as Wolfgang Raithl, legal advisor to the farmers' association, warned - hardly all seven dairy farmers who have survived in the formerly rural community will survive the price increase.
The Ickinger farmers currently use around 14,000 cubic meters of water a year, the total consumption of the community is 200,000 cubic meters.
This means that the farmers bear about 15th part of the total costs.
But what if they can no longer pay?
Then the community would have to pass on the lost income to the citizens anyway, said Raithl.
Water price: Four solutions
The options that are now being considered in Icking to cushion the burden of the increase in water costs for farmers offer four options: The biggest adjustment screw that could be turned would be to bill for the water via contributions rather than fees - that is with contributions that are based on the size of the property and the floor area of the respective connection.
"Pure maintenance measures", said Mayor Verena Reithmann, "of course you can't compensate with this, but we are definitely looking into this possibility".
Another option would be to increase the base rate, which has been discussed before and, as Reithmann said again, wouldn't do all that much: "If we double the base rate, the price of water will only decrease by 20 cents per liter, that is not very much.
And the municipality cannot expect single people to pay a tenfold increase in the basic fee, as was proposed that evening.”
It is also being considered to use a petition in the state parliament to ensure that fees can be staggered again and that heavy consumers and special cases receive special tariffs.
This option had been abolished throughout Bavaria 20 years ago.
dr
Beatrice Wagner suggested daring what BBV expert Raithl called a form of "civil disobedience" and simply not sticking to the abolition of the graduated fee structure in the municipal tax law.
Her further consideration: “The principle of equal treatment from the Basic Law also allows unequal treatment if there is an objective reason.
Can we start here?”
Ultimately, the evening was marked by the resolution on all sides to avert the worst.
Ruth Maria Frech said the following morning: "I haven't given up hope yet." The farmers from Dorfen also said: "Hope dies last."
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