ForumforAg Food Systems Podcast Summary

In this episode, Mark Titterington talks with Jörg-Andreas Krüger, President of the National Biodiversity and Conservation Union (NABU). They discuss NABU’s new strategic partnership with the Forum and the synergies and alignment of NABU’s initiatives with the recently published Call to Action. Jörg-Andreas also highlights the need for a good agricultural system which has a good balance between the income for farmers, the production of good quality food and also the maintenance of ecosystems.

Here is a summary of the conversation.

Tell us about NABU,and why you joined the Forum. What are the synergies, and what impact do you hope to make?

We’re a 125-year-old German organization, driven by volunteers. We have 950,000 members and supporters, and 77,000 active volunteers in 2,000 groups working in the regions. We also have institutes researching into agriculture, forestry and fresh water management systems. The goal is to bring the results of the research into discussions with politicians and companies. It’s important to us to find new partners and platforms for discussions. The political arena can be rather traditional and fail to focus on the solutions we need.

What inspires you in this role? And what inspires your activists?

We want to develop a good land use system, a good land management system, a good agricultural system that balances farmers’ incomes, production of good quality food and the maintenance of good ecosystem services and populations. Also rich biodiversity, healthy soil and good freshwater management. It requires partners to discuss how to modernize and do that more efficiently.

In Germany, we worked with many organizations on the Commission on the Future of German Agriculture and found solutions together. You need to have discussions with farmers, not just the political sector.

One of the key messages we need to get across is that there are limits to what policy can do.

On one side of the table we need the coalition of practitioners from nature conservation, from ecosystems, from farming, and on the other the politicians. That’s the key to the future.

That’s the ethos of the Forum, which was set out in our Call to Action published around 18 months ago. How do you see the two organizations aligning, and how do you think NABU might contribute to the Forum’s actions?

Both NABU and the Forum share an understanding of the questions we have to address. For example, finding metrics and a methodology to value ecosystem services to help farmers be paid for them. We want to share experiences and be challenged by other experts.

Coming back to the policy environment, what are the critical points we need to move ahead on?

One is to make progress on implementing the Green Deal. We’ve heard what many parties do and don’t want. We have to discuss how can we change – what is the best and most responsible way ahead? We need to get back to the table.

The other part is about innovative finance models. There is a lot of thinking about payments from supply chains and value chains. But how do we put that theory into practice in a safe way? We have to work on some Europe-wide legislation, so we have the same frame for solutions.

There is a general dissatisfaction with the system we have. How do we go about forging a new consensus? What are your learnings from Germany?

We had the extraordinary situation where the German Commission was working on the future of agriculture during the pandemic. As a result of that, we didn’t travel and meet, so we had to build trust. And we still have that trust in Germany. Even if we have angry debates with farmers, we still have that direct connection. We meet each other, we recognise our differences, but we still have trust.

The other learning is that a report like the one we published is always well-balanced, but the first steps of implementation can never be well-balanced. They are just first steps and that’s why you need trust between the partners.

Would you say a report is not an end, it’s the beginning of the end, and the hard work has to be done in the implementation?

Yes. And to go back to trust, what we see now is missing trust, between bigger parties like farmers’ associations and NGOs, and also deep in our societies. In Germany, we can’t only aim to build trust at federal level. We have to do it at farm level. In the end, it’s people who convince people by being in direct contact.

As we come to the summer break, what do we need to address when we come back? What are you excited and concerned about?

My concern is that, with the protests we saw over the winter, it will be difficult to come back to progressive discussion. So we have to bring people back to the tables. We have to understand the level of the farmers’ frustration, and find the solutions that balance ecology and the economy. We have to create platforms – and I’m really looking forward to our discussions and using the power of our organizations and expertise together.

If you have found this short summary interesting, there’s lots more to hear in the full 25-minute conversation. It is available now on iTunes, Podbean or Spotify or on this website.