German farmers urge freeing up fallow land

Crop yields in some German regions are likely to be significantly lower than expected, the president of the German Farmers Association (DBV), Joachim Rukwied, said on Friday, amid near-drought conditions in some areas.

Overall, the harvest nationwide is expected to be lower, with Germany's hot summer and lack of rain having left huge swaths of arable land parched.

Meawhile, Rukwied's DBV urged the German federal and state governments to give farmers more flexibility when it comes to planting on land that has been set aside as fallow.

What the DBV chief said

Rukwied said his organization expected a "below-average" harvest in Germany compared with the previous year, with some regions particularly hard hit by the dry weather.

"There are regions where decent yields could be harvested," he told the German broadcaster ZDF. "On the other hand, we also have regions where we were able to harvest 25-30% below the average of previous years."

Rukwied also said he hoped there would be rain in time for autumn harvests to pick up. 

No agreement on freeing up land

The farming chief was critical of government policies that have kept about 200,000 hectares (480,000 acres) of agricultural land unplanted this year.

The European Commission had said it was planning to ease environmental regulations imposed on farms to allow more food production, amid unusually high food prices around the world.

The commission proposed granting exemptions for one year for crop rotation rules and arable land that is left fallow to recover from previous harvests.

A meeting of agriculture ministers at both federal and state level on Thursday failed to reach an agreement on how Germany might proceed. The DBV president — whose organization pleaded with the government to take up the offer earlier this week — said that, in doing so, the ministers had "consciously worsened the nutrition crisis."

Rukwied said his members were frustrated that they could not take up the offer, which could allow them to produce an additional 1.4 million tons of wheat.

Further talks about the feasibility of freeing up land within Germany are to be held in the coming weeks.

Brussels has said it wants to suspend the policy — ostensibly introduced to deliver environmental benefits while reducing overproduction — to help ease the crisis exacerbated by a lack of access to grain from major exporters Ukraine and Russia.

rc/msh (AFP, dpa)