Auf Wiedersehen, Berlin!

In front of Brandenburg Gate.

Well, it is our third and final day in the city of Berlin. For a large city, I have actually grown quite fond of it. Tonight we head to Neubrandenburg and meet our next host, Ralf. Throughout the entire time we have had excellent hosts through the DBV and Astrid. She has done a phenomenal job putting together our agenda and even more importantly, keeping us on it.

Amazingly enough, we were able to make the short jaunt from the hotel to the DBV office on our own. I know, at least considering me, this is surprising, but I think it gave Astrid hope that we would actually complete our journey via the train later that day successfully. Making it to our office, the jam packed day began.

We started our morning off with more fascinating discussions for the policy wonks with the latest from the EU Common Agricultural Policy or CAP. This is basically the Farm Bill for the European Union, which has just gone through some significant changes. For a while, farmers were guaranteed a certain price (a price floor for my econ peeps) or the government would purchase the commodity from you. Can you guess what that lead to? Surpluses. Very large stocks of grain, meat and dairy products, to name a few, owned by the government. Now they are changing things up by decoupling payments from production and providing a payment per hectare or head of livestock. Sound familiar farmer friends? On top of all of the changes, there are certain strings tied to the "greening" of the land. To not have a dock in your payments, you must put five percent of your land into a nitrogen fixating plant, even if there isn't one that can be grown profitably in your area. And if you are a large farmer, you are required to have a crop rotation with the number of crops rotated determined by your hectacreage. While I know how frustrating our system back home can be, this discussion truly made be appreciate what we have, or don't.

After we wrapped up our CAP discussion, we headed over to the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture for some discussions on trade. More fun for the wonks. We discussed TTIP for some time and why the free trade agreement between the EU and USA has come under such heavy scrutiny. We also learned how the negotiations work and that Germany must work through the European Union for what it would like to see in the agreement. So, they basically must convey the German government's desires in this negotiation, and hope the EU will take them into consideration. A very interesting discussion which, unfortunately, we weren't able to help solve any problems.

We next had a working lunch with the DBV's Annie Neu. She is the editor of the DBV's magazine, which goes out to its top leaders every month. We had a great time discussing membership publications and what they do for the organization and the policy direction that they focus them on,

Next we headed to the DRV, which is an association of cooperatives, to talk with Mr. Guido Seedler. First, their office is in an unbelievable location near the Brandenburg Gate and Pariser Platz and did they have a view of the Brandenburg Gate and Riechtag from the office they held our meeting in, We received a great overview about German agriculture and its Cooperative history. We then wrapped up our day up with a meeting about lobbying the German Parliament. While we may have quizzed our guides of the Riechtag, we learned more about the process, the path of a bill, and how to get your desired outcome you would like on a bill when it comes legislating in the German Parliament. It is a fairly complicated process.

Brandenburg Gate from meeting room of DVR.

That was our last meeting for the day and the end of our time in Berlin. Astrid helped us hop the train to Neubrandenburg. She was an amazing host and we all hated to have to leave her. But is now onward to new adventures in Neubrandenburg with our guide, Ralf, who picked us up at the train station and gave us a lift to the hotel. We had a late dinner and were ready for the farm tours to begin in the morning. Totally looking forward to actually seeing some German agriculture.

Nick