Floods in Germany: Desperate farmers fight to save harvests

While most Germans were celebrating the new year, farmer Dirk Reinecke was frantically getting his three tractors ready to go and bring in 150 tons of potatoes before they rotted in the floods. That would have meant the loss of his entire winter harvest.

Reinicke and other farmers in Lower Saxony, northwestern Germany, have been working nonstop for days, helping to seal off dikes from the floods. "I'm 58 years old and I've never experienced a flood like this before," Reinecke told DW. "We normally see some flooding every four to five years. But we've never had water levels in the village as high as they are now."

Lower Saxony: Almost every farm is affected by flooding

Reinicke's family has run their farm for eight generations, mainly producing milk. But now, every morning, Reinicke goes to check the water level of the Aller. The river is 260 kilometers (162 miles) long and usually meanders through the federal states of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt at a leisurely pace. Now water is overflowing from its banks in many places.

In the neighboring village, a 1.2-kilometer-long mobile dike from France is currently being put in place. "It would only have taken for the waters to rise another 23 centimeters [9 inches] and our village would have been underwater, too. And that would have been a completely new situation. I really don't know what would have happened if the dike had breached," said Reinecke.

Landvolk Niedersachsen, the regional farmers' association, estimates that all of the 35,000 farms in Lower Saxony have suffered water damage to their fields. "Several hundred thousand hectares of arable land and grassland have been flooded," said the association's president, Holger Hennies. Hundreds of farm buildings were affected, "but fortunately only very few farms saw their stables flooded and had to evacuate their livestock."

Floods, austerity plans add up to a difficult year

In many parts of Lower Saxony, the potato and sugar beet harvest is at risk. Due to an extremely wet autumn, many paths were no longer navigable for the heavy machinery used for harvesting. Farmer Reinicke said many of his fields have been underwater since November.

"I still have 1 hectare of potatoes I haven't even been able to harvest — they have been lost. The damage amounts to around €6,500 ($7,113). On top of that, there are losses to the tune of €5,000 for 20 hectares of grain," Reinecke said, calculating the economic hit. "I'm currently drawing on my reserves from last year, but of course they will be used up at some point. 2024 will be a difficult year, is all I can say."

A difficult year, not least because the German government's austerity measures have resulted in the abolition of tax breaks for agricultural diesel, as well as for agricultural and forestry vehicles. The floods have now dealt farmers a second blow in a very short space of time.

Reinecke also went to the farmers' protests in Berlin in December. They were successful: On January 4, the German government announced that it would partially reverse the cuts in subsidies for farmers.

Suspend the federal 'debt brake' because of flooding?

Because of the floods and the large-scale damage, there are calls for the federal government to relax the "debt brake" enshrined in the constitution. Under German law, fresh debt is limited to 1% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in any annual budget. Additional borrowing is only allowed in the event of natural disasters or emergencies "that are beyond the control of the state and significantly affect the state's financial situation."

The extent of the damage is not yet clear. The floods not only destroyed thousands of plots of farmland, which will have long-term consequences, but they've also brought entire supply chains to a standstill.

The 150 tons of potatoes that Reinecke is now storing under a huge green tarpaulin on his farm, for example, were supposed to be processed into starch, but the company that does this has also been affected by the floods. Also, most of the winter cereals farmers sowed in October have been destroyed by the flooding, so farmers will have to plant again in the spring — if there's enough seed available.

Climate change puts farmers under pressure

Reinicke also wonders what he'll do with the liquid manure if it can't be brought out on the fields before mid-February. And then, farmers may face the next huge challenge just a few months later: a summer drought. Reinecke is very worried about the future of German agriculture, especially because of climate change.

"I think we will see a few larger farms survive. But the family farms, the medium-sized and smaller farms like mine, will have to either find their niche in the market, or sooner or later say it's no longer worth it, lease out the land and look for other sources of income."

This article was originally written in German.

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