Federal Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir has promised early proposals to ease the burden on agricultural businesses. There are discussions between the federal government and the coalition factions in the Bundestag about this, the Green politician made clear on Friday after discussions with his state colleagues in Erfurt. He couldn't give details. Among other things, it is about consultations in connection with the Growth Opportunities Act, which will come to the Federal Council on March 22nd. Özdemir said he was very confident that an agreement would be reached.

The state chamber had initially thwarted the law for a growth package and sent it to the mediation committee with the Bundestag. One point of contention was that the Union was demanding a reversal of the abolition of agricultural diesel benefits. The Bundestag then decided on a slimmed-down version of the growth package, which will come back to the Bundesrat on March 22nd. After the mediation committee, the federal states made it clear that they expected proposals in favor of agriculture beforehand.

Saxony-Anhalt's Agriculture Minister Sven Schulze (CDU) said that he does not consider what is being offered as an alternative to agricultural diesel to be sufficient at the moment. The chairwoman of the state agriculture ministers, Thuringia's department head Susanna Karawanskij (Left), made it clear that biofuels and alternative drive technologies should also be expanded more strongly.

In view of the farmers' protests in January, the traffic light factions promised in a motion in the Bundestag that they would "list concrete projects in the first quarter of 2024 that would give agriculture planning security and relief" - i.e. by the end of March.