« Full and dissatisfied – farmer Willi and the dilemma of the food makers (sated and dissatisfied – Willi the farmer and the dilemma of the meal makers) – the foreword
Here is the foreword to ” Full and dissatisfied – farmer Willi and the dilemma of the food makers (sated and disgruntled – Willi the Farmer and the Meal Makers Dilemma)
Foreword
Dear reader, dear reader,
When it comes to food, everyone has something to say because we eat every day. It doesn’t matter whether we prepare the meal ourselves, eat it in the canteen or eat a cooked meal: what’s on your plate comes from us, the farmers, the meal makers. We produce food for you, citizen and consumer. Why am I making a difference? As a citizen, you disagree with a lot of what we (mainly conventional) farmers do. You don’t want mass breeding, no genetic engineering, no monocultures, no “ pesticides (which we call phytosanitary products), and you also make many other demands. As a consumer, you buy (despite all the rhetoric) few regional, seasonal or organic products. Above all, you are buying at a low price. But in the polls your answers are different. And that’s my problem with you: your words don’t match your actions. This is the dilemma of meal planners.
In this book, I want to take the opportunity to take you, you who live in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Luxembourg or Bern, into my current world of agriculture, which we gladly call modern or industrial agriculture. The fact that you hold this book in your hands shows that you are interested in the subject.
My profession is on the defensive. Farmers now play a role of extras, only regarding 1% of gross domestic product comes from agriculture. The welfare society misses the peasants. The world of values is in ruins: Discounters buy milk and meat at low prices all over the world, the fruits of the orchards rot, the bark beetles destroy the trees of the forests, and with them decades of heritage. The war in Ukraine has not changed much in this situation. On the contrary, the hardness of the buyers ofAldi, Lidl, rewe et Edeka further increased. When strawberries, asparagus or cherries are too expensive in Germany due to the high minimum wage in European comparison, farmers here are dereferenced and they import Spanish fruit and vegetables harvested by North African migrant workers. Greed is an absolute necessity in these times of high inflation.
And what regarding the farmers? The family farms of yesteryear have become highly professional businesses. They are almost all, even in the field of organic farming, increasingly large and at the cutting edge of technology. Whether we like to admit it or not, the big eats small, the fast outruns the slow, the smart outruns the dumb. Of course, we don’t want to admit it, but that’s the way it is.
Will this change, can this change? This book describes the thoughts and feelings that animate me in moments of silence. It addresses the change in the social climate which deprives me more and more of the pleasure of working; it makes me wonder if we can still, in good conscience, recommend that our children also become farmers. Because if they no longer want to practice this profession, we will witness the extinction of species of another kind: peasant agriculture will disappear. This will not be without consequences for all of us. This worries me, and you probably do too.
As I think I know your doubts, your concerns, your fears, your judgments (and your prejudices), I would like to focus on what is particularly controversial. I promise not to omit any topic. I also want to highlight the many contradictions and conflicting goals that arise around agriculture and food. Conflicts of objectives which concern us, the farmers, but which we can only resolve with you. We need mutual understanding. This means recognizing that more than eight billion human beings cannot be fed without negative effects, no matter what form of agriculture we practice. Any form of food supply is an attack on nature, which is also confirmed to me by my neighbour, an organic farmer. Here we go once more, the dilemma of meal planners.
Climate change and the disappearance of species are a reality. The tasks of us farmers are therefore also changing. We have always changed and we have already experienced and mastered many agricultural transitions. Now we, food makers and society, must agree on the most important task ahead of us farmers: safe and affordable food, more animal welfare, more climate, more protection of biodiversity. We farmers can do anything, someone just has to pay. And this is where the shoe pinches: the citizen has high demands that he does not want to pay as a consumer. It’s a dilemma.
Climate change and species loss receive maximum political and media priority and attention. In this context, agriculture is not only guilty, it is also a victim, it is often said with a hint of compassion or reproach.
Yet we farmers suffer less from rising temperatures, occasional droughts and unfavorable rainfall. The profession is coping with it, because the whims of nature have been with us since time immemorial. No, it is the social climate, constantly fueled by contradictory polls, often dubious (semi-)scientific reports, peremptory accusations and excessive demands, which puts farmers to the test. It changes the behavior of demand, it gives rise to and legitimizes the policy of imposing particular national routes in agricultural production with considerable cost increases. And this, while the borders of the EU are open and agricultural raw materials are largely interchangeable. The food industry and trade play the game, they can always be sure of their profit margin. And the political powers let them. The stakes are therefore high, not only for the individual farmer, but also for the security of supply in our country. As a citizen and consumer, you participate through your purchasing behavior in deciding whether we will still produce enough food in Germany in the future.
We’ve had enough!
Terms such as intensive farming, monocultures, pesticides, nitrates and genetic engineering mark the debate. As people live longer and longer (my mother just celebrated her 100th birthday healthy and in full possession of her faculties), more and more foods are attributed with adverse health effects. This is all the fault of the farmers, it is in any case the general opinion of the population and our feeling as farmers. It is fueled by a multitude of organizations that take advantage of the turmoil to make money. In a way, the trade in indulgences thanks to PayPal. A conglomeration of various nature, environment and climate activists march through Berlin every year during Green Week with the slogan ” We’ve had enough ! “. As tractors are also present and theWorking group on rural agriculture (AbL – working community of peasant agriculture) participates, it gives the impression that it is an agricultural event. The themes change from year to year; most of the time, it criticizes the agricultural industry, but with variations. Sometimes it’s the big farms that are the bad guys, sometimes it’s also the companies that produce fertilizers or phytosanitary products. A clear rejection of genetic engineering is invariably part of it. (At the invitation of the organizers, I was the only conventional farmer able to speak in 2018. Since then, I have not been invited once more).
Thanks to us, you’ve had enough
Why is the discussion so intense, so vehement and often without prospect of conciliation? We, the citizens of the so-called ” developed world in the Industrialized Nations, we are satisfied. Better still: we are more than satisfied, we live in abundance. And the more the availability of food increases, the more we seem to be dissatisfied. While we only spend a fraction of our disposable income on food (barely 11%), the criticism of ” modern production methods that have made it possible to produce these inexpensive and high-quality foods. At the same time, we import foodstuffs from overseas, from countries whose production conditions we often know very little regarding and where our purchases result in the export or destruction of precious resources. Products that we didn’t even know by name 30 years ago are now available in every supermarket. Fresh avocados, pineapples, mangoes, lychees, goji, no one knows how much kerosene is attached to them and how much water was used in their production.
I have enough !
I am tired of continually hearing the judgments and prejudices of my concerned fellow citizens, without them taking the time to listen to me. This is not your case, dear reader, dear reader. You seem to be interested in the subject and I welcome that. I would like to take up your arguments and give you my opinion. You don’t have to subscribe to this opinion, but I would be glad if you understood it. Understanding does not necessarily mean agreeing. I can live with that and I can already imagine where the criticism will come from.
In this reflection, I want to focus on groups that participate in changing the social climate. There are the politicians who set the framework conditions, the media who talk regarding us, the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who criticize our work, the food retail trade who use structural surpluses to drive down prices, the farmers’ associations which are supposed to represent the interests of the farmers, the science which produces theoretical analyzes and gives advice from its ivory tower. And there are the farmers who, in this world of different and often conflicting demands, find their way to the future. This is a book regarding the dilemma of meal planners.
