Federal Minister of Agriculture Cem Özdemir and DLG President Hubertus Paetow campaign for less bureaucracy in agriculture

Federal Minister of Agriculture Cem Özdemir (Greens) and the President of the German Agricultural Society (DLG) Hubertus Paetow have called for less bureaucracy in agriculture. "What you want and what I want to create is planning security and reliability, less unnecessary bureaucracy and more scope for organization," said Özdemir on Tuesday during a visit to the DLG General Assembly in Leipzig, which is not open to the public, according to a speech transcript.

However, it will not be possible to do completely without bureaucratic regulations and obligations to provide evidence. However, "it must be possible to simply make the work in the office less bureaucratic so that there is more time for work in the field and in the barn". Özdemir also noted that the bureaucracy that had grown over the years was not solely the fault of the current federal government.

The minister said that the federal government now wanted to work with the federal states to reduce the bureaucratic burden on farmers. He had asked the federal states to submit concrete proposals for less bureaucracy in February. In his opinion, constantly referring to the next higher level is not a solution.

Paetow pointed out that unthinking bureaucracy bashing is not the DLG's approach. Bureaucracy and controls are fundamentally the "price of justice in a democratic state", said the DLG President. "If we call for a reduction in bureaucracy, we must ensure that this does not also reduce justice."

In order to restructure administrative processes and reduce duplication and triple documentation, Paetow called for a sensible reorganization of administrative processes. One concrete proposal could be a switch to cloud-based, digital systems in an ideally standardized federal portal.