In October 2024, Fairebel, the pioneering Belgian Fair Milk brand, celebrates a decade and a half of striving for local and fair agriculture. Founded in 2009 by a group of farmers, Fairebel has become more than just a milk brand: it symbolises resilience and solidarity within the Belgian agricultural sector. Today, Fairebel continues to grow, representing over 500 producers who have come together to offer quality products while, at the same time, guaranteeing that each and every one of them is fairly remunerated. This ensures future prospects for the young farmers who are members of the cooperative.

For the next few years, Christophe Hansen from Luxembourg is set to hold the reins of agricultural policy in the EU. The EPP politician (European People’s Party), who was already an MEP, is an environmental and geoscientist and comes from a farming family.

In an open letter sent on 7 October 2024 to the President of the European Commission, the President of the Agrifish Council and the President of the European Parliament, European farmer and agri-food worker organisations have demanded a fast-track procedure be initiated by the end of the year to add purchasing agricultural and food products under the cost of production to the Unfair Trading Practices Directive black list.

Farmers For Action UK NI have connections with EMB that date back to its origins. We are very grateful for this opportunity to connect with EMB members and everything EMB is trying to achieve, which is an extremely difficult process, against bureaucracy and the corporate food industry. Over recent years, we have worked on a legislative bill to ensure cost-covering farm-gate prices for farmers. In 2013, we set about bringing farm organisations in Northern Ireland together under Northern Ireland Farm Groups to work on a legislation bill on farm-gate prices to return to farmers a minimum of the true and inflation-adjusted cost of production plus a margin.

You couldn’t miss it: on 12 September, the BDM rolled up at the Agricultural Ministers’ Conference with a 650-tonne mobile crane with an axle load of 12 tonnes, proclaiming its message for all to see: we must tackle the big issues! To give the ministers and their chiefs of staff attending the conference an idea of what these big issues are, we invited them to get a “bird’s-eye rather than frog’s-eye view for the urgently needed realignment of agricultural policy” from a height of 60 metres in the basket – for a symbolic and real overview with an opportunity for political discussions at the same time.

The background to our stunt is the awareness that even after the massive farmers’ protests, many aspects of agricultural policy remain bogged down in details, and that there simply isn’t the political courage or determination to go ahead with the urgently needed fundamental changes, despite the clear message that the protests gave. Yes, there’s a great need to reduce the exploding, excessive red tape – but that alone isn’t enough to offer the farmers an economic perspective for the future. The issues at stake go way beyond state transfer payments (= taxpayers’ money), which always involve complicated bureaucratic procedures. What is needed is further development of the Common Market Organisation, putting agriculture in a position to give farms economic prospects. This is the only way to succeed with the much discussed “transformation of agriculture” that is deemed necessary.

Visitors from the other federal states

The BDM stunt was well received by visitors from Lower Saxony, the Saarland, Brandenburg, Thuringia and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the BDM proposals have been looked at in great detail. Here the ministers and undersecretaries certainly proved to be resilient to the weather, which they needed to be, at temperatures of 5 to 9° C and short, cold showers. The Thuringian host Minister Susanna Karawanskij and her undersecretary Torsten Weil proved to be particularly weather-proof and didn’t let the heavy showers put them off being lifted up to airy heights in the basket. The only CDU (Christian Democratic Union) minister who showed any interest in a brief opportunity to talk about things was from Saxony-Anhalt, remaining true to his general willingness to discuss matters, which we have already seen in the past.

As in Erfurt, the Thuringian branch of the Farmers’ Union accompanied the Agricultural Ministers’ Conference with a “forest” of banners showing 194 demands for cutting the red tape. The demands were fastened to balloons and released into the sky. Although these demands were right for the most part, it must be said that the type of agricultural policy being pursued by the Farmers’ Union, consisting primarily of obtaining public money hand-outs, almost automatically leads to more bureaucracy. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, this is something that many people who have nothing to do with agriculture but were forced to apply for public assistance now know about, too.

The Farmer’s Union is also trying to prevent moves towards a contractual obligation between dairies and dairy farmers with the killer argument of even more red tape, despite the fact that contracts are standard practice elsewhere in the business world. Nobody would ever think of rejecting contracts as meaning too much red tape. The same association that is so politically virulent in demanding a reduction in bureaucracy has no scruples when the quality assurance system QM Milch keeps on extending its requirements and thus also the amount of red tape involved.

The BDM input at the start of the Agricultural Ministers’ Conference was very clear:

Our message to all ministers

This time we have deliberately not gone into detailed explanations of our well-known demands, such as improving the market position for farmers or creating a safety net for the agricultural markets. “Business as usual” is no longer an option, because this has made the market distorted; farmers have become dependent on subsidies and environmental damage has been caused, while farming is losing its appeal to the younger generation. For the BDM, it is clear that the future alignment of EU agricultural policy plays a crucial role in facilitating sustainable development of farms. The urgently needed fundamental reforms mean that the ongoing discussions about the next multiannual financial framework, which will come into effect at the earliest in 2028, must be held in good time.

We think it is necessary for the agricultural subsidies in the framework of the CAP 2028 to be tied consistently to specific criteria and services in the context of protecting the environment, the climate and nature, instead of maintaining a considerable share of the funds as a “basic payment”. Given the tight public budgets, these could be more vulnerable than funding that is tied to specific requirements. More money must be made available to the agricultural sector, regardless of how agricultural subsidies are designed in future. The structuring of the Common Market Organisation within the CAP is an important lever to safeguard economic prospects for farms. Refinancing investment in animal welfare measures should be possible within ten years, in the interests of greater planning certainty.

More than 30 associations have joined forces to draw up a position statement with the heading “Shaping future: Working together for a resilient, greener and fairer farming sector and agricultural policy”, explicitly supporting the necessity for farmers to be able to generate their main income through the market. Public funds for more ecological services must be conditional on farmers having a sustainable livelihood. We see these proposals as forming the basis for political work also in the individual German federal states.

Furthermore, we also gave the ministers two other urgent issues to think about. Among others, the economic and psychological stress caused by the spread of the bluetongue disease necessitates financial support for the farms that are affected. We also proposed the introduction of an additional eco-scheme for the preservation of long-term permanent grassland, given the scientifically verified significant role that this plays in climate protection, seeing that pasture grazing of dairy cattle is not feasible for all farms!

Associations’ meeting bogged down in detail

At the latest during the associations’ meeting, held traditionally on the Thursday of the Agricultural Ministers’ Conference, it once again became clear that the large number of different associations results in the discussions getting bogged down in detail, because everyone wants to use the opportunity to bring forth their own specific concerns. Not much that’s new, but a lot that’s very familiar: cutting the red tape, expanding the pilot farm network, using drones, funding for reforestation etc. – all important topics that affect us, and which are being addressed, and rightly so, by many agricultural stakeholders. These topics took up a lot of time during the associations’ meeting held at the start of the Agricultural Ministers’ Conference, so that the association representatives didn’t spend long enough taking a broader view. Is it really useful for such a large conference to deal with far too many detailed aspects instead of talking about the bigger picture?

Let’s say it again: red tape, official requirements and so on haven’t come out of the blue, but originate from the wrong alignment of agricultural policy. NOW is the time to change this. We’ll stay on the ball!

Johannes Fritz, Bundesverband Deutscher Milchviehhalter e.V. (BDM)