AfD MP Explains Why German Farmers are Up in Arms Against Scholz Government

19:38 GMT, 15 January 2024

© Sputnik / Stringer

Ilya Tsukanov

Demonstrations led by farmers protesting cuts to subsidies have swept across Germany, with the European economic powerhouse brought to a standstill last week after farmers blocking roads were joined by striking rail workers. Sputnik asked AfD lawmaker Rainer Rothfuss to explain what’s driving Germans’ anger against the Scholz government.

Thousands of tractors converged on Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate on Monday for a massive rally against government plans to cut agricultural subsidies, with Finance Minister Christian Lindner booed while addressing a crowd of tens of thousands after saying he couldn’t promise any “more state aid from the federal budget.”

Chancellor Scholz attempted to soothe farmers’ rage over the weekend, announcing a “compromise” which a government spokesperson previously indicated would see a gradual cut in diesel fuel subsidies instead of slashing them all at once, plus a deal to keep tax breaks for vehicles engaged in agriculture in place. The German Farmers’ Association criticized the government’s proposal as “completely inadequate.”

Railway workers put additional heat on Scholz last week with a three-day national train drivers’ strike, threatening further industrial action unless Deutsche Bahn “come[s] to its senses” and meets demands for better wages and working hours.

Farmers and railway workers are at the forefront of the protests, but certainly aren’t the only groups in German society that have a bone to pick with the current government, Dr. Rainer Rothfuss, a geopolitical analyst and MP from the conservative populist Alternative for Germany party, told Sputnik.

“We never had a situation like this, at least that I can remember with my 52 years of age. It's just such a wide discontent of so many sectors in not only the economy but also society with the performance of this present government, the so-called traffic light coalition, with SPD, FDP and Green Party on board,” Rothfuss said, explaining that the government’s fundamental decisions –from their reaction to the Ukrainian crisis, to energy policy, fueling public discontent.

“So this all now focuses on one spot and it becomes obvious for larger parts of the population, not only the farmers, that this government obviously reigns against the very interest of the people. It either does stupid things or, another explanation would be, it follows other interests. It follows ideological interests of a transformation of the economy, society, etc. But a third variant that we should look at is the transatlantic influence. Germany is far too important for the United States to be given up as its main ally, which shall [one-sidedly] be a partner of the United States, and not of Russia. And so what we are seeing now is all tied together with this framework,” the lawmaker explained.

Farmers’ Fury

The farmers’ demands are simple, and center around pressure by the government listing them as the “main target” of a phony “green ideology” demanding CO2-neutral farming and various restrictions in farmland use, Rothfuss explained.

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German farmers protest in Berlin

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German farmers protest in Berlin

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German farmers protest in Berlin

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German farmers protest in Berlin

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German farmers protest in Berlin

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German farmers protest in Berlin

© Sputnik / Stringer

Germany is “a rather small country, a densely populated country with over 84 million inhabitants. So this would increase our dependency on food imports…Farmers are now displaying, showing to the public that if they are put under pressure, if their conditions of producing our foodstuffs, if they don't have the chance to compete with the neighboring countries' farmers because they receive much more subsidies than the German farmers, then our farmers will be lost,” he said.

On top of that, the alternative – more imports from South American countries, proves the true hollowness of the ‘green farming’ proponents’ claims, according to Rothfuss, with imports not only putting out more carbon emissions because they must be shipped halfway around the world, but often produced using controversial methods, such as Brazilian slash and burn agriculture in the Amazon Rainforest.

“I have spoken to many farmers in the past years, and they told me that the basic problem is that they do not receive a producer price, which allows them to have profit on their investments, something which is totally normal for any other business sector in Germany. So the farmers depend, almost half of their income depends on subsidies. This, of course, puts them into a very, very critical situation because the decisions of the government hurt them a lot. And some of what the farmers receive are not even subsidies. So one point of the dispute was that the government would not pay back 21 cents per liter for the diesel, which is being used in the machines and the tractors used on the fields of the farmers,” Rothfuss explained.

The latter shouldn’t even be treated as a “subsidy,” but a means to return “a little bit of justice” for producers, the lawmaker believes, since 90-99% of farmers’ operations using tractors and other machinery is in the fields, not the roads and highways which the state collects taxes to maintain.

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The farmer protest is a “symbol for the situation of the whole economy,” Rothfuss says, noting that farmers are more visible simply because workers in other sectors often don’t have similar traditions of gathering to make their collective voices heard, and of course don’t have equipment capable of shutting down the country’s roadways and city centers.

“This is a situation where even a rich and strong economy, an industrialized country, a leading industrialized country like Germany, must fear that its economic basis is being eroded. And this is also strictly bound to the larger framework of geopolitics of the Ukraine war, of the attempt [by Washington] to pull investment from the German industry over the Atlantic to the United States through the Inflation Reduction Act. And this is a real major danger for not only Germany, but also for Europe, as we are the motor of the European economy. The other countries will feel it also through the decreased financial flows, because Germany has been the master financer of all the European Union in the past decades. If Germany stumbles, Europe's stability is at risk,” Rothfuss stressed.

Commenting on recent polling suggesting that between 75 and 80 percent of Germans are dissatisfied with the current government, the AfD lawmaker characterized it as a “consequence” of the traffic light coalition's pursuit of policies which are “against the interest of the German people,” and assured that “sooner or later, the voice of Alternative for Germany…will be heard by the people.”

“It's a situation where people are starting to understand - we need a complete overhaul of German politics, and we need a totally new culture of governing, a culture which respects the needs of people, national interests, without being aggressive to any partners and neighbors, just as we have almost in any paper shown to the German Bundestag, to the public, expressed it. And I think this shift in German foreign policy is coming quite soon,” Rothfuss summed up.

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World Rainer Rothfuss Olaf Scholz Christian Lindner Germany Berlin Russia Deutsche Bahn Sputnik Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)Brandenburg Gate Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD)