Meat is so heavily subsidized it is cheap af.
German agriculture either needs a extremely green or an extremely capitalistic revolution. Sadly the green party is just talk and no actions. Farmers currently only make a profit because it is subsidized.
The state could just give the money to poor people instead and let them buy food at its real price.
The current state just sucks.
bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
@khaosgrille well, as long as the EU funding is coupled to bigger is better nothing will change. soil ruining practice is too profitable for the big agrocompanies, and likely the only way for the few remaining small farms to survive. even if they want to change to sustainable models, the change does cost money to get things going.
just letting the market fix things doesn't work anymore at this point as the agrocompanies got too big due to the broken funding model.
maybe things will just fix themselves in the coming cold hungry winter UwU
@khaosgrille
looking at other industries, small farmers won't come back after "suffering". it's already shit for them. sure, we can blame them for not acting right in the 90s, but if that means we're left with agrotech monopoly everyone is fucked, as industry cares jack shit for the soil etc. we will be left with totally depleted soil no fertilizers (which are getting rare) can fix. we already see this here in some regions. it will be dustbowl.
alternative is to subsidize small family owned farms (preferably using traditional methods), cutting funds to industrial farming. stuff will be cheaper, but we will have locally produced food for longer than the next ~20 years.
@khaosgrille
the subsidiaries should be stopped at one point for sure, but they are the way to fix a system which is broken by subsidaries, imho.
@bonifartius
A few years ago, I had a chat with the farmer next door (nearest neighbor) about EU. First off, he said that the subsidies in Sweden disappeared in the 1980s/90s and everything got balanced by the time Sweden joined EU. Then he got subsidies back, but lost power over sales prices. He was basically against subsidies, and what is happening is Big Subsidies to corporations, and very Small subsidies to family farmers. So they are closing shop en masse now.
@khaosgrille
@niclas
> [...] what is happening is Big Subsidies to corporations, and very Small subsidies to family farmers. So they are closing shop en masse now.
that's happening here too, especially in eastern germany as things already were organized in big structures there.
