Oh, look at that. These delicious rolls. Crispy, mhh. And there Mmmmmarmelade.
And this plate (finely decorated) is wonderful, it makes your mouth water... oops, what's that?!
(child) Egg liqueur!
Speaker: I'd rather have an egg for breakfast - or like this - or like this - or umm (clears throat).
Maybe it's better like this. Bread, eggs, beer, cheese, sausage, a vegetable spread for vegans - that's all part of a good meal.
We buy it in the supermarket as a matter of course. But we hardly know where this food comes from, who produces it and what is involved.
Basically, all of this comes from agriculture, which thus forms the pillar of society.
As King Frederick II said: "Agriculture
is the first of all arts, without it there would be no merchants, poets or philosophers.
Only that which the earth produces is true wealth"
Wouldn't you think that the farming profession is a prestigious, noble profession that everyone holds in high regard?
And that the farms, where valuable food is produced, the cultural landscape is maintained and values are created, can exist sustainably?
But more and more farmers are giving up their work.
Young people no longer want to work in agriculture.
What are the reasons for this?
Who is interested in this situation, which has consequences for society as a whole?
Kla.tv has already reported on covert/hybrid warfare, in which stable structures are deliberately destroyed for the benefit of individuals.
This documentary gives you an insight into these connections and
into an area that affects us all more than we realize.
Since German reunification, agriculture has dramatically lost its role in supplying the population with food.
Due to unprofitability, less and less food, such as potatoes, is being grown in Germany itself.
In practice, this means that around 70% of food is imported into Germany today.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, the share of imported plant-based foods amounted to around 81% in 2015 - in 2008 it was still 73%.
This makes it clear how dependent Germany has become in terms of feeding its population.
But how does this happen?
More and more laws, rules and regulations are making it very difficult for farmers in Germany to survive with their farms and families through food production.
In practice, for example, the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) leads to valuable farmland being misappropriated.
Farmers lease or use it for wind turbines, photovoltaic systems or biogas plants.
The targeted promotion of energy production means that this arable land is no longer available for growing food.
This means that today energy maize is worth more than so-called bread wheat, and liquid manure is worth more than milk, as these valuable materials are converted into electricity in biogas plants.
These regulations and laws make working in Germany more expensive.
Cheaper imported products therefore seem attractive.
A free trade agreement between the EU and the common South American market (Mercosur) was launched in June 2019.
It opens the European market to, among other things, genetically modified soy from South America.
Almost 70 kilos of soy are already imported per EU citizen every year for the production of animal foodstuffs.
Soy is a very protein-rich animal feed and is available very cheaply despite the long distance.
According to the Brazilian agricultural expert Larissa Bombardi, glyphosate residues of a maximum of 0.05 mg per kilogram are permitted for soy in Europe.
In Brazil it is 10 mg per kilogram - 200 times more.
Glyphosate is a weedkiller and has been proven to be carcinogenic.
If the glyphosate limit for imported soy were lowered to the level permitted in drinking water, no more soy could be imported.
This would also make the cultivation of lupins, peas and field beans as native fodder crops in Europe worthwhile, to the benefit of farmers, the environment and consumers.
It is not only in the fields that farmers are facing considerable obstacles, as many dairy farmers are also under pressure because the milk price is too low.
If they don't want to give up, they have to expand and modernize.
For example, a farmer invests half a million or more in a new, larger barn.
Nevertheless, he loses out.
28 to 36 cents per liter of milk is too little to cover costs, and
repaying the bank loan is out of the question.
This is why around half of all German dairy farms cease operations every ten years, according
to Torsten Hemme, Director of the renowned Research Institute for Dairy Farming IFCN says.
To avoid suffering the same fate, the remaining farms are getting bigger and bigger and producing more and more milk.
The large dairies can put pressure on "rebellious farmers", because despite fewer farms there is too much milk on the market.
A handful of large corporations are targeting the "white gold", milk.
They don't want hundreds of thousands of farmers across Europe to make money from it.
The former president of the European Milk Board (umbrella organization of European dairy farmers) and farmer Romuald Schaber writes well about this in his book "Blood Milk":
"Only when milk is in the hands of the powerful few will it find its high price."
The following context shows how far this has already progressed:
As the milk market is becoming increasingly global, the major European dairies are also competing internationally for the coveted milk powder market*.
Farmers in Europe are being forced to produce more and more milk at ever lower costs.
The surplus milk is dried and exported to developing countries in the form of milk powder by large dairies so
cheaply that local farmers cannot keep up with these milk prices.
In the end, only a few large corporations make money from this globalized milk powder market.
However, the livelihoods and sovereignty of farmers in importing and exporting countries are being destroyed.
However, this economic pressure is not the only thing that farmers and their families have to deal with.
Carina Konrad is an agricultural engineer and deputy chair of the Bundestag's Committee on Food and Agriculture.
She says: "A farmer today is a multi-talent."
His skills include chemical and physical knowledge of how soil and animals function and the translation of this knowledge
into the practice of plant cultivation and animal breeding, as well as sophisticated documentation and office management.
Taxation and business administration are no less essential than social media and marketing. Controller, manager, chief officer [...] a farmer is all of these in one person."
Despite all his cleverness and unspeakable diligence, he is in dire straits in many places.
Many suffer from burnout and the suicide rate among farmers is much higher than in the rest of the population.
Many farmers are therefore longing for an easier working day.
The digitalization of agriculture is repeatedly cited as the saviour and solution to these problems.
For example, robots take over milking, and drones apply fertilizers and pesticides to the plants in a targeted manner.
The data collected, such as animal health, weather parameters or machine wear, is stored centrally and
the farmer can monitor and control his business processes via a computer program.
The best-known program of this type is marketed by the agrochemical company Bayer.
This opens up new areas of business with the mass collection and analysis of process data.
Bayer hopes to earn billions of euros by advising and optimizing agricultural operations.
However, according to a study by the Inkota* network, this concentrates power in the hands of large data-collecting corporations,
as they effectively determine what farmers grow, which machines or which seeds they use.
Despite these promising possibilities, such innovations should be rejected as
long as they unilaterally serve companies and increase the dependency of farmers.
The farmers' association "Freie Bauern" (Free Farmers) from Germany puts it in a nutshell in its demands:
"Under the guise of environmental protection, the industry is not only trying to sell digital applications in agriculture, but to present them as indispensable.
Efficient use of technical innovations is a matter of course for us, but we want to be free to decide what we use on our farms. "
Many farms in Germany are already heavily in debt or are going out of business due to age and stress.
More and more external investors are taking advantage of this and buying stakes in farms or arable land.
Although this is prohibited by law for non-farmers, more and more investors are exploiting various loopholes in the law.
In 2019, for example, an asset company of the retail company ALDI took over two large companies in Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.
For them, farmland is not used to produce food for their discount stores, but as a stable financial investment.
In total, more than 34% of land in eastern Germany is now owned by these non-industry investors.
Because the land is now finding more interested parties, purchase and lease prices have risen by an average of 2.5 times in the last ten years.
The farmers can no longer afford the land, but the financially strong investors can.
However, it is the diverse regional businesses that produce high-quality food.
They ensure high added value in the regions and feed the country in times of crisis.
But in general, the question arises as to who benefits from these developments if it is not the farmers themselves.
In a 2019 study, Dr Guido Nischwitz, a researcher at the University of Bremen specializing in rural development, found that for
decades, EU agricultural policy has been dominated by MEPs who work together with fertilizer companies, agricultural machinery manufacturers and banks.
A network of politicians, agricultural company managers and association officials decides
which farmers receive how much money, how they should work and what ultimately ends up on consumers' plates.
The former Brazilian environment minister Jose Lutzenberger put it in a nutshell back in 1995:
"It's basically about a gradual and systematic takeover of agriculture by
the big chemical and machinery companies, food processing and marketing companies and banks.
The real farmer should disappear.
What remains is a tiny cog in a huge machine, firmly integrated, without the slightest freedom of movement."
This statement is doubled by an assessment from Romuald Schaber: " [ The farmer]
is only disturbing because he is free, because he owns land, because he is independent.
It would be more pleasant for politicians and discount retailers, dairies and the agricultural
industry if farmers worked like industrial workers, dependent, on low wages and taxable."
Did you have any idea how much pressure farmers are under?
And also to what extent national agriculture is entangled in global structures?
The agenda of covert warfare becomes visible again in the things we have pointed out.
Stable structures that serve humanity are being fought against and
what remains is a system where everyone looks out only for themselves
- for their own profit.
Let us understand the situation of farmers as a reflection of society!
If they can be free, society is free.
Otto von Bismarck puts it like this:
"If agriculture doesn't exist, the state can't exist either."
So the fate of the farmers is also our fate.
This shows how we all depend on each other.
So let's start right here.
Simon Roche, a civil rights activist from South Africa, advised that when the international
crisis comes, when the markets collapse, the demand for goods no longer exists and unemployment is rampant,
then we need regional economic cycles as a way out, where people
know and trust each other, live in dependence on each
other and in truthfulness with each other.
Good advice, not only in times of crisis.