Protesting farmers have gained extra time to push through more of their demands, by a vote of the CDU-led states in the Bundesrat, upper house of parliament, on Feb. 2, to postpone its decisions on the government’s planned budget cuts to its March 22 session. Farmers will, therefore, continue protest actions to force the government to discuss fundamental changes in the agricultural policy.
Mostly organized by the “Countryside Creates Connection” (Land schafft Verbindung, LSV) initiative, tractors deployed on Feb. 5 for decentralized actions in several states of Germany; farmers and winegrowers throughout Rhineland-Palatinate took to the road with their tractors to blockade 10 of the central warehouses of major retail chains, including Lidl, Aldi, Netto, Edeka, and Globus.
As Andreas Jung from the LSV told SWR television in Koblenz, the stores were to be blocked before the Feb. 5 truck-driving ban ended at 10 p.m. This is intended to pressure the retail chains, as they largely determine the prices of agricultural products. Jung emphasized that that would only be the beginning. If the companies are not prepared to talk, the blockades could be extended over several days.
