Thousands of protesters have called for agricultural reform in Berlin. Protesting during green Food Week in the German capital, Berliners called for the government to change its agricultural policies to meet the demands of civil society, benefitting animal welfare, the environment and communities.

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The 23,000 demonstrators demanded an end to food scandals, animal cruelty and genetically modified food products and called for a more responsible approach to food production, sensitive to the wishes of consumers. The marchers descended on the chancellery, as they blame Chancellor Angela Merkel of acting in the interest of big business, at the expense of German citizens by continuing to allow excessive food speculation, which has led to rising food prices, although the latest figures from the UN show food prices have eased slightly over the last year.

They said that current subsidies benefit large scale farmers and industrial livestock producers, and that continuing down a path of scaling-up relentlessly is the wrong direction for European agriculture. Members of the 90 rural and environmental groups which took part in organising last week’s demonstration called for more support for farmers doing the right thing.

Georg Jansen of the Rural Farming Consortium said, “We need to show much more solidarity with farmers and with our world and engage with agricultural issues like healthy food and livestock friendly breeding.”

Protesters blame politicians for bending to will of big business

Germany recently blocked biodiversity goals from being included in the reformed Common Agricultural Policy; the move was criticised by a number of farming and environmental groups who said that environmental goals should form an integral form of European policies going forward. Scientists have suggested that falling biodiversity around the world presents a more significant problem than climate change, and potentially one that will prove more difficult to rectify.

An Agriculture Ministers' Summit ran concurrently with the protests during Berlin’s food week; sixty-four ministers from around the world discussed new strategies for global food security. The German demonstration has become an annual event, and despite the poor weather, has attracted more and more people as awareness around food issues continues to grow in Europe.

The ministers and protesters are all concerned with how the world can continue to produce food using reduced resources and impacting less on the environment, whilst feeding a growing population and tackling the dual problems of one billion undernourished people, and another billion who are obese. German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said that the main issues under discussion last week were protecting resources, struggling against erosion and salinisation and ensuring access to water to keep land fertile for production around the world.

Last week Aigner and the Ministry for Agriculture presented a Charter for Agriculture and Consumers, which had been drawn up with input from all stakeholders in the German food industry, including farmers, environmentalists, consumers and trade associations. Ms Aigner stressed the need for dialogue and working together to forge a future for agriculture towards which all parties could feel they had contributed.

The focus of the charter was towards further transparency and minimising the harmful impacts of agriculture whilst remaining profitable. Ms Aigner said, "It is my programme and is geared to the short, medium and long term. We will constantly update the programme in a dialogue with the big social groups. We share the goal of improving the understanding between farmers and consumers – a great feat that we can only accomplish together."

The minister has also cracked down on the misuse of antibiotics and pushed for the EU to do the same.

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