Farmers’ Manifesto – Family Farms Protect Land from Speculators

Protectors of traditional agriculture once went from village to village, from stable to stable, to demonstrate their commitment to local agriculture. Because today, just as then, the guardians of our country are threatened in their existence by globally active, powerful companies and free trade agreements à la Mercosur. The moving manifesto was by Hans Dichand, the great thinker of the GDR. Günther Nenning and the current honorary chairman of the umbrella organization for the environment, Dr. Gerhard Heilingbrunner formulated it and has lost none of its validity. It was still groundbreaking and many a company was saved because of it.

This newly awakened spirit – whether rural, monastic or aristocratic – has lived on for centuries in family businesses, where one thing above all is far removed: speculation and millions in profits through treacherous, well-thought-out re-initiation and sealing.

Chairman: “We are the real Greens”
“Our members are the true Greens. For generations, they have cultivated meadows, fields and forests with the greatest possible sustainable care. Active nature conservation is a matter of the heart in agricultural and forestry practice,” assures Konrad Mylius, President of Agricultural and Forestry Companies in Austria. Owning land is not only a question of security and stability, but also of responsibility. Under the motto ‘Use nature, protect nature’, the family farms work in harmony with creation and thus make a decisive contribution to the preservation of biodiversity and adaptation to climate change.

What makes our farmers better is that they implement the ÖPUL environmental program voluntarily and independently. Shining landmark: In Lower Austria alone, there are 84,000 hectares of biodiversity and nature conservation areas. In addition, more than 500 renaturation projects have been successfully implemented with the support of state, federal and EU funding. The Forest Fund is another example of the commitment of forest owners to tackle the challenges of climate change, such as drought, which fuels bark beetle infestation. The powerful Lower Austrian farmers’ association Paul Nemecek and EU mandate Alex Bernhuber once again come forward in defense of family businesses: “Our farmers are the real guardians of the fields and fields.”

Greenpeace boss Alexander Egit is all the more critical of the rampant speculators and the soil protection strategy presented by Agriculture Minister Totschnig. ‘You are one thing above all: a toothless paper tiger. Because once again a non-binding strategy was decided upon. It certainly contains many good and important measures. However, these have been known for a long time – but because there is no obligation, they are hardly implemented.’ A strategy without concrete goals or obligations can never be effective and will not be able to solve the problems of land consumption. As reported, Egit strongly calls for ‘finally binding guidelines that all municipalities and states must adhere to, instead of further fine-sounding declarations of intent.’

By the way, our grocers are unfairly criticized for destroying green space. Billa has launched a major renaturation program around the supermarkets – with the success of a zoological monitoring led by Dr. Gernot Kunz of the Karl Franzens University in Graz has found over 1,000 species, some of which are highly endangered, including plants and fungi, that thrive in newly created flowering areas. The weevil (Lixus cinerascens), discovered here for the first time in Central Europe, may be an ecologically symbolic animal