The market doesn’t regulate everything, but it does regulate some things – if organized correctly. “Correctly” means: the market must reward the solidarity-based treatment of nature and punish harmful behavior. For decades, the EU agricultural sector has consumed a quarter of the EU budget – around 50 billion euros every year. [EU Agricultural Policy in Figures | 2025-10-31]

Since the turn of the millennium, annual EU subsidies have amounted to the gigantic sum of more than one trillion euros. Yet this subsidy deluge has neither halted the decline of farms nor the destruction of ecosystems. Therefore, nature solidarity demands a market-based concept for the entire EU agricultural and food sector based on the principle: polluters must pay for the damage they inflict on nature! Instead of continuing to squander billions of euros in taxpayer money, more environmentally friendly farming methods must become economically viable for every farmer. This will enable farmers to produce food with nature – and not against it – in the future.

True Prices instead of EU Mismanagement
The EU’s agricultural policy is pure subsidy madness. Since the introduction of payments around the turn of the millennium, well over one trillion euros have flowed into European agriculture. In Germany, taxpayers have to provide around 10 billion euros year after year in the form of subsidies and other state expenditures. Approximately 6.5 billion euros of this comes from the EU pot for area payments and redistribution premiums; in addition, there is a flat-rate VAT, agricultural diesel aid, vehicle tax exemption, advantages in inheritance and income tax law, and an 80 percent subsidization of old-age benefits. But that’s not all: this highly subsidized agriculture, in its current practice, causes gigantic damage. The Boston Consulting Group’s consultants estimated these so-called external costs at at least 90 billion euros annually in Germany alone in 2019. They arise from the input of pollutants into soils, water, and air, as well as from the loss of diversity in species, genes, and habitats. The consultants calculated: if damages and state expenditures were passed on to food in terms of true cost, for example, a kilogram of beef would cost five to six times as much. [ Boston Consulting Group, Securing the Future of German Agriculture Sustainably, 2019 | 2025-10-31]

Why does the EU engage in this agricultural mismanagement? One of the most important reasons is its fixation on wanting to be among the largest food exporters globally by selling pork, grain, cheese, milk powder, butter, wine, beer, processed foods, and much more. Historically, there is an explanation for this: the “Green Revolution” during the 1950s to 1970s ensured that European citizens had an unprecedented supply of food. However, industrialized agriculture produced so much that in the 1980s, the infamous “milk lakes,” “meat and butter mountains” emerged. To prevent prices from plummeting due to oversupply and farmers from protesting, the surplus meat and butter were frozen, and the “milk lakes” were turned into milk powder. Because this became too expensive in the long run, politicians resorted to exports as a solution, often supported by subsidies. Since then, the export engine has been running at full throttle, making the EU, despite accounting for only 3.4 percent of the world’s agricultural land, the world’s largest agricultural exporter, far ahead of the USA, Brazil, and China. [ Sustainable and Resource-Efficient Use of Global Agricultural Land and Biomass, UBA Position Paper 2013 | 2025-10-31]

In agricultural and food trade with the rest of the world, the EU has achieved surpluses for years, most recently 70 billion euros (2023) and approximately 64 billion euros (2024). [EU agri-food trade achieved a record surplus in 2023 / EU agri-food trade: surplus at 63.6 billion euros / Monitoring EU Agri-Food Trade Developments in May 2025 / Agricultural products – developments between 2014 and 2024 / Europe Report No. 09/2025 of 2025-10-29 from the Free State of Bavaria / EU is Export Champion in Food, taz from 2024-06-17 / Record in Agricultural Trade: EU Exports Food for 235 Billion Euros | 2025-10-31]

The export fixation is accompanied by the false narrative that the EU is helping to feed the world. However, according to the United Nations World Food Programme, the cause of hunger for approximately 730 million people worldwide is not an insufficient food supply. The main reasons are poverty, climate and weather, war and displacement, unstable markets also due to speculation with agricultural commodities, lack of investment in agriculture, and gigantic food waste. [What are the causes of hunger? wfp.org 2017 | 2025-10-31]

Germany serves as an example of the EU’s supposedly hunger-alleviating export regime, with only 0.5 percent of its agricultural exports going to the 48 poorest countries in the world. [Understanding Agricultural Exports. Facts and Background, BMEL 2018 | 2025-10-31]

The flip side of the “export records”: the global market for agricultural goods is characterized by brutal price competition. This price pressure not only impacts domestic farmers but is also the natural enemy of any “sustainability”: fewer pesticides and mineral fertilizers on fields, stricter animal welfare regulations, a greenhouse gas levy for meat production – such measures increase production costs. This reduces sales opportunities for European farmers on the world market and in the EU internal market compared to low-cost providers from third countries where such requirements do not exist.

The relentless competition leaves deep marks: According to the EU Commission’s report “Caring for soil is caring for life” published in 2020, 83 percent of arable soils contain pesticide residues, and up to 75 percent are massively over-fertilized. [Caring for soil is caring for life | 2025-10-31]

Accordingly, the annual degradation losses of EU soils amount to more than 50 billion euros. In addition, there is groundwater damage, millions of cases of animal suffering, avoidable CO2 emissions, and a worrying decline in pollinating insects and field birds. And this is despite annual subsidies for EU agriculture of around 50 billion euros.

A devastating balance sheet, especially considering that from a market economy perspective, European farmers actually have the best conditions: 450 million customers who need to eat daily. Other industries dream of such a large and stable demand. It is a damning indictment of EU agricultural policy that, under such conditions, it cannot organize a functioning market that provides adequate incomes for producers and preserves natural livelihoods. The focus on maximum yields in the fields, maximum animal performance, and competitiveness in the fiercely contested global market has made EU agriculture prey to corporations and financial market speculators. Thousands upon thousands of agricultural livelihoods have been and are being destroyed as a result.

nature solidarity wants agriculture and nature conservation to be conceived and implemented together in the EU and in each member state.