Harvest press ride of the Landsberg District Farmers' Association

Created: 06/07/2022, 08:09

By: Ulrike Osman

Field inspection during the harvest press trip: farmer Andreas Hager, Green Party member Gabriele Triebel and district farmer chairman Johann Drexl (from left).

©Osman

Issing – The effects of climate change are becoming more and more noticeable, the consumption of land is becoming more widespread and the agricultural sector is increasingly struggling with the guidelines from politics.

Against this background, this year's harvest press trip by the district farmers' association was marked by outrage and concern on the part of the farmers.

"We are meeting today under completely different circumstances than in recent years," said district farmer chairman Johann Drexl, welcoming the participants to Andreas Hager's farm in Issing.

While it used to be about surpluses and land reduction, the war in Ukraine has suddenly turned the focus back to food security.

Drexl is all the more critical of the loss of agricultural land caused by the constant flow of new commercial and residential areas.

Between 1980 and 2014 alone, 4,000 hectares were lost in the district.

As far as climate change is concerned, the district of Landsberg is still in a comparatively favorable position, stated Drexl.

While extreme drought prevails in Italy, Portugal and France, but also in Central Germany, the precipitation in the local region is "just enough" for plant growth.

The district farmer chairman had brought comparative figures with him.

Accordingly, only 350 liters of rain per square meter fell in the first half of the year, 470 to 500 liters would be normal.

All the farmers present were critical of the four percent set-aside that was aimed at as part of the reform of the common EU agricultural policy (CAP reform).

The reform stipulates that from 2023 farmers will be obliged to keep fallow land if they want to receive direct payments.

Drexl calculated that wheat for 6.4 million rolls - that's 1.5 rolls per day for each district resident - could be grown on four percent of the agricultural area in the district.

Green member of the state parliament Gabriele Triebel - besides the mayor of Vilgertshofen Albert Thurner (SPD), the only politician present - pointed out that it was about stopping the extinction of species.

“CAP reform is not being made for fun.

We have to take species extinction very seriously.” She warned against playing one crisis off against the other.

During the political discussions, visiting the fields became almost a minor matter.

However, as far as the harvest prospects are concerned, things are looking pretty good.

Andreas Hager keeps 140 dairy cows on his farm and grows his own fodder on his fields – winter barley, silage maize and winter wheat, with the latter sometimes also being used as brewing wheat.

Added to this is rapeseed as a renewable raw material.

So you can see that not all cereals are suitable for human consumption, said BBV Managing Director Kaufbeuren-Landsberg Thomas Kölbl.

He disagreed with the notion that cultivating food for human consumption on all agricultural land would do a great deal to combat world hunger and climate change.

According to Kölbl, cattle farming and beef consumption are not drivers of climate change – only eight percent of CO2 emissions come from agriculture.

In addition, experiments with red algae in cattle feed could have reduced the animals' methane emissions by 80 percent.

At the end, everyone agreed that agriculture and environmental protection are closely linked and that creative solutions must be found together.