As of: March 2, 2024, 6:00 a.m
By: Boris Forstner
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The protests at the reception of the district Greens were not from the BBV, says the chairman.
© Photo: Ruder/Archive
The farmers' protests also kept the district in suspense for weeks.
In summary, Wolfgang Scholz, district chairman of the Bavarian Farmers' Association (BBV), is very satisfied.
But he also says that the distinction is difficult: “Not everyone who drives a tractor belongs to the BBV.”
District
- In the middle of the night on Wednesday, an unknown farmer unloaded a large silo bale with a wooden cross on the B 472 roundabout near Burggen.
Because he threw large pebbles onto the road, the road maintenance department had to clean the road and remove the bale, said the police, who are investigating dangerous interference with road traffic.
It was one of the few cases in which the police had to investigate - otherwise the protests in the district were peaceful.
BBV district chairman Wolfgang Scholz also emphasizes this: “We are very satisfied with how it turned out.” For example, to block the motorway entrances, they had to negotiate for a long time with the police and the authorities and were able to carry out the action approved despite some compromises.
“It wasn’t approved in other districts, but the farmers still blocked it – illegal actions like this are exactly what we don’t want,” says Scholz.
“We captured that,” says the BBV boss
Without the BBV, Scholz is certain that the protests would not have been so coordinated: “If we hadn't sorted everything out, things would have been different.
We have captured that.” The “Land creates connection” association was also less active in the district, but nationwide and throughout Bavaria, and they complemented each other quite well.
There is even praise from the Federal Association of German Dairy Farmers (BDM), which otherwise has a deep dislike for the BBV: “They mobilized well, and many of us also took part,” says Josef Taffertshofer Jr.
from the BDM district executive committee.
In principle, people are also against subsidies; farmers would like to get by without them: “We would like to be able to live off our production.
But that doesn’t work, instead there are always new requirements for us,” says Taffertshofer Jr.
The rural agriculture working group (AbL), on the other hand, was only initially active when it came to the abolition of the vehicle exemption.
“That would have been an unparalleled amount of bureaucracy and not at all feasible,” says Rudi Kühn from the AbL Oberland regional group.
In his opinion, the abolition of the diesel subsidy would only affect industrial agriculture, which is already rejected.
It's about five, sometimes six-figure sums.
In his small business with 20 dairy cows, he earns around 900 euros a year, “that doesn’t make much difference.”
What annoys Kühn: The traffic lights in particular were the target of the protest, “a lot of things went wrong before.”
“We cannot prevent marginalized groups from getting on the tractor”
The main target of the protests was and is the Greens.
They even had to worry about their New Year's reception because farmers had protested there and the AfD had joined in.
“It's incredibly exhausting for us volunteers when you're looking forward to a nice meeting with friends and fellow activists and you have to have a security conversation with the police beforehand,” says district chairwoman Katharina von Platen.
Especially since they were ready to talk and had discussed with BBV representatives before the reception.
“And then farmers drive around unannounced and the Imgart is there,” she says, referring to the AfD demo.
Scholz knows the problem, which von Platen puts it like this: "When in doubt, it is always the BBV's fault because it is the largest association." Scholz says that you cannot prevent fringe groups from getting on the tractor.
“It’s always called ‘the farmers’, but you have to see who they are,” says Scholz.
There have been successes, and Scholz is politically experienced enough to know that 100 percent of the goals cannot be achieved.
Now it's about maintaining the pressure, for example in order to prevent the controversial set-asides.
“Otherwise, products of dubious origin are imported instead.
That’s not good for the CO2 footprint,” says Scholz.