News Digest Item
22 Jul 2016

“Cattle more essential than cars”

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

German farmers oppose environment minister Barbara Hendricks’ Climate Action Plan 2050 because it suggests reducing the number of cattle, the use of fertiliser and tying EU subsidies to environmental performance, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. Joachim Rukwied, president of the German Farmer’s Association (DBV), said that the climate plan could reduce agricultural added value by 9 billion euros per year and endanger 200,000 jobs. Rukwied also opposes the notion of farmers producing less, and people eating less, meat. “Cattle emits per se, cars emit per se. But cattle is more essential to life,” he said.

Read a CLEW factsheet on the Climate Action Plan 2050.

All texts created by the Clean Energy Wire are available under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)” . They can be copied, shared and made publicly accessible by users so long as they give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

Journalism for the energy transition

Get our Newsletter
Join our Network
Find an interviewee