The problem: Stagnant agricultural incomes are leading to real losses in purchasing power for farming families, especially those on conventional farms. Even expanding or intensifying production doesn't solve the problem, but merely postpones the critical endpoint by a few years. Production expansion, already only possible in favorable locations, leads to increased dependence on the machinery industry due to the rising workload, while intensification strains the relationship between nature and agriculture. Both aspects are diametrically opposed to most societal megatrends and the challenges of climate change. Organic farms have successfully avoided this problem, but conventional farms have yet to be offered a suitable exit strategy. Without intervention, the facts predictably point to the demise of the conventional, family-run farm in Austria.
The proposal: Conventional agriculture, by involving the entire value chain, returns to the roots of good agricultural practice. This approach aligns its performance targets with the potential of the location and optimizes production by utilizing natural resources. Feed, fertilizers, and pesticides are not used to increase yield, but rather to support the stabilizing and protective principles of integrated production. Key societal issues broaden the scope of action. This document describes nine measures for positioning conventional farms within site-appropriate agriculture and five further sets of measures for institutional anchoring, pricing, and the subsidy model.
The authors' group hopes for a broad but focused discussion of the draft in agriculture and the market economy, politics and society.
