A Dream Day for a Policy Wonk - Berlin Day 2

Today was a day a policy wonk dreams about, so of course, Kristi Bosewell and I were in heaven! We spent the day talking with our host organization, the Deutscher Bauernverband or DBV. They are an organization with over 300,000 German farmer members that advocates for German agriculture. And as it turns out, the more I learn about the DVB, the more I see just how similar they are to the American Farm Bureau Federation in the United States.


It didn't seem too far from home when we kicked things off with a staff meeting on a Monday morning. Listening to reports about last week's events (all in German) so everyone could catch up on last week's activities. We had a tight schedule to keep, so we had to sneak out early for our first meeting of many throughout the day. We heard from numerous DBV staff and discussed issues that ranged from public relations and message outreach, environmental policy facing German ag, and the vocational education system that Germany has.


The difference in challenges that German agriculture face were as striking as the similarities. One of the most striking differences is in our education system. As we in the US seem to keep moving more kids toward the four year university path, Germany has a vocational program where after 10 years of school, a student can choose a path at the age of sixteen and start training for a career. I don't know about you, but at 16 I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Even to be a farmer, you must go to an additional three years of school, one more in the classroom and two more gathering experience in the field. This took us a while to wrap our head around.


The afternoon was filled with a of the German Reichstag, home of the German Parliament. This included a meeting with DVB member and Parlimentarian Herrman Faber with his staff giving us a personal guided tour. They did an exceptional job. We saw some amazing history in the building, like the scrawls of Russian soldiers from WWII and the history of the "fat chicken", which was recently renovated to hold parliament after the German reunification in 1989. By the way, the 25th anniversary of the day the Berlin wall crumbled will be this Friday.


During the tour we quizzed our guides on how parliament worked and learned it is a fairly complicated system. It includes everyone getting two votes, one for a person and one for a party. Then, depending on who wins individual elections and what percentage a part gets (needs 5% to be represented in parliament) in the elections determines how many seats parliament can have. Sometime this lead to Überhangmandate, or party being over represented so the number of seats must be adjusted for fairness. A very different concept than we are used to dealing with in the US.


We wrapped everything up with dinner with the General Secretary of the DBV and our host, Astrid where we continued to discuss issues of water, animal welfare, trade and politics in general. Oh, we were still trying to wrap our brains around Überhangmandate. Looking forward to our next day at the US Embassy and sightseeing around Berlin.


*Pic will upload as the internet allows.*


Cheers,


Nick