Access To Land
Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft (Small Farmers Association/AbL) is a rural advocacy organisation, which is committed to sustainable agriculture in terms of a socially and environmentally sustainable agriculture and of appropriate framework conditions. In the AbL conventional and organic farmers have joined forces. The majority of the farms are small and medium farms.
AbL informs its members and the public about important issues of agricultural policy at different levels and issues statements. It represents the positions of farmers and takes part in debates about legislation etc. The central concern of AbL is to address the social questions of agriculture, in order to avoid that unilateral economic or ecological considerations are too dominant and thus the social dimension is not considered.
AbL's farmers are increasingly developing resources (e.g. background data, proposals, information campaigns, events) to offer solutions for the increased demand from society for a new orientation of agriculture.
The tremendous price increase for land rental and purchase in Germany endanger the existence of peasant farms and hinder the start-up of young entrepreneurs. The AbL struggles actively against a misaligned EU-CAP that rewards large scale owners and disadvantages small/medium agro-ecological farms in the competition, while strengthening industrial farming. Furthermore we also struggle against the discrimination of peasant farmers in the new federal states by the rental and sales practices of the BVVG and against the respective rules for leasing of state-owned land in the east German federal states. The AbL draws attention to the new agricultural competitors, whose investment background is not in line with the farmers economic principles."
