As of: March 13, 2024, 1:02 p.m
By: Andrea Gräpel
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The rural women's district board with its guests (from left): Herrsching's third mayor Wolfgang Schneider, board member Maria Grenzbach, BBV managing director Thomas Müller, district farmer Sonja Frey and her deputy Anette Drexl, Father Korbinian Linsenmann, deputy district farmer Irmgard Posch from Erding and district administrator Stefan Frey .
I had been in office for 18 days when everything started.
District farmer Sonja Frey on the start of the farmers' protests © Andrea Jaksch
The protests have brought farmers together.
“That did something to me,” said district farmer Sonja Frey on the sidelines of the Rural Women’s Day in Herrsching yesterday.
The event in the House of Bavarian Agriculture was also characterized by cohesion.
Herrsching
– The Bavarian Farmers’ Association in the Starnberg district has 626 members and 31 local associations.
In every local association there are local men or, as in Berg and Krailling, female local chairmen, and there are rural women.
There has been a lot of change in the district recently.
Sonja Frey has been a district farmer since the end of November.
For the first time, she invited people to the traditional Rural Women's Day - this time in the House of Bavarian Agriculture in Herrsching.
Around 170 guests - musically entertained by the Country Women's Choir and the Weikertshofer Zwoagsang - accepted the invitation and were able to convince themselves of a happy coincidence that arose with the new district farmer Frey and district chairman Georg Holzer.
Holzer is also new to the position, having taken over from Georg Zankl a year earlier.
In Herrsching, he and Sonja Frey appeared as a good team, welded together by recent events.
“I had been in office for 18 days when everything started,” Frey recalled of the start of the protests in December in response to the abolition of tax breaks for agriculture.
“We stood up together for ourselves and our rights,” said the 53-year-old from Erlinger and was proud.
Born in Munich, she only had a peripheral involvement with agriculture during her childhood and youth.
She now describes herself as a farmer with heart and soul.
With Holzer and her husband Markus at her side, she familiarized herself with the topics, helped organize the demonstrations, went to Berlin and gave interviews.
So confidently that district chairman Holzer asked for a big round of applause for the district farmer in his welcoming speech.
He also talked about the “blow” that occurred in the fall after previous “catastrophes” such as Corona and drought.
The boards of both district associations were challenged and accepted the challenge.
Holzer, for example, set off for Berlin at 4:30 a.m. one day and was back in the stable in Diemendorf in the evening of the same day.
No comparison to the current railway strikes, said District Administrator Stefan Frey appreciatively.
Some who fight for a four-day week with full wage compensation, others who have to stand on the mat seven days a week and have their benefits canceled.
Frey supported the farmers' demands.
Sonja Frey expressly thanked him for this appreciation and for his support.
The district board is now highly motivated and is now communicating via WhatsApp groups.
There is a lot of cohesion among the member companies, said Sonja Frey.
“Even the men now have their own group,” she joked, not without emphasizing: “We were first.” A not entirely serious swipe, because district farmers and rural women made a good team in Herrsching.
The keynote speech by the deputy district farmer Irmgard Posch from Erding also focused on cohesion.
The economic and social contribution that agriculture makes contributes to stability and peaceful coexistence.
Women farmers are often the driving force.
“Our motto: Don’t complain, but get involved and help shape things.” Sonja Frey put it differently but similarly on the sidelines of the event.
She still enjoys meeting up with her friends in Munich and accepts long journeys to demonstrations: “But it’s only when I’m standing in the stable that I’m grounded.”