Most recently, Cem Özdemir has really dealt with all sorts of things, but not, just for example, with paludiculture on bog soils or with slatted floors in stables. And if he had anything to do with poultry, it was most likely in the form of cockfights in his own parliamentary group – in which Özdemir, who had been head of the Greens for many years, ultimately prevailed. He becomes Minister of Agriculture.
The office may not be the first thing that Özdemir would think of. During the explorations of the Ampel-Coalition, he was responsible for negotiating the economic chapter for the Greens, and in the previous legislative period he was mainly concerned with transport policy. However, this need not be a disadvantage in the heated debate about the prospects for agriculture. In any case, Özdemir is not burdened.
He will have plenty of work because his predecessor Julia Klöckner (CDU) leaves many of the big questions in agriculture unsolved. First and foremost, the question of how the interests of the environment and farmers go together – in such a way that either the soil, field birds or groundwater do not have to believe in them, or the farmers themselves. The mood among the farmers is irritable, the next demos are already being prepared .
In order to resolve the conflicts, the old federal government had set up a “future commission”. Agricultural associations, environmentalists, retailers and scientists should outline a way forward here. Together they called for agriculture to be greener, which should be supported and financed by society. But the old government ignored the result, and the traffic light coalition agreement only touches on it in rudiments.
The ball is now on the penalty spot for Özdemir
The members are already worried that all the work might have been in vain. He hopes that the new government and the new minister will take up the proposals, says Peter Strohschneider, who headed the Future Commission. A consensus has been reached across all areas that is still sustaining. “That is a great value and a great social advance.” The farmers’ association sees it no differently, and neither does environmental associations. “Basically, we spent a lot of time putting the ball on the penalty spot,” says Myriam Rapior, who helped negotiate for the BUND youth team. “And now nobody seems to want to shoot.”
The same applies to another commission of the former federal government, headed by the former Agriculture Minister Jochen Borchert. She had dealt with animal husbandry and suggested a decade-long renovation of stables. Consumers should finance it, for example through a levy on animal products. There is also a broad, painstakingly found consensus behind this report, which also disappeared in the ministry’s drawers – and only appears in outline in the coalition agreement. When Cem Özdemir moves into his new office on Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin, the cupboards will definitely not be empty.
And he has plenty of friends right away, nobody wants to be badly off with the new minister. Farmer President Joachim Rukwied tries to get the country team to work right away, his Eberstädter Hof is in Özdemir’s home town of Baden-Württemberg. It also doesn’t matter that the green lacks the “stable smell”: “An alert mind works itself in quickly.” The working group of rural agriculture, which is closely related to the Greens, calls the personnel proposal an “interesting challenge”, but at the same time raves about the political experience of the minister-designate. And the Free Farmers, one of the young splinter groups in agriculture, sends a message of tolerance to the newcomer. Özdemir, who is a vegetarian, doesn’t have to eat schnitzel with the farmers. “But we would like to explain to you why vegetarian or vegan agriculture doesn’t work.” That’s going to be fun.