00:00 This tractor is more than 60 years old.
00:06 But it's still used almost every day on the Buchner family farm in Bavaria.
00:12 Every year the Buchners use around 11,000 liters of diesel.
00:16 The government used to subsidize the expense with a partial tax refund dedicated to agriculturally used diesel.
00:24 Used to because Berlin says it can no longer afford this.
00:28 If we no longer get that money, that's money we can no longer invest,
00:33 like when a machine breaks, when repairs are necessary at the barn.
00:37 We just won't have the money for that anymore and there's things we couldn't do.
00:42 The end of the diesel tax rebate would hit family farms especially hard.
00:47 The Buchner farm is one of the smaller ones in Germany with 60 hectares of land and 40 dairy cows.
00:54 Christoph Buchner is 23 years old. He just finished his training and got his master's diploma.
01:00 The barn he works in was built by his grandfather.
01:03 The cattle spend summers outside on the pasture.
01:06 In winter the cows are in here, tied to their gates.
01:10 They got a beautiful coat, they produce a lot of milk.
01:15 In winter they gain some weight. They're pretty happy.
01:19 My cows are doing just fine. I know that for sure.
01:27 They look good. When a cow is sick or doesn't feel well, she won't gain weight and she won't produce milk.
01:35 Animal rights activists in the Department of Agriculture in Berlin disagree.
01:42 Tying cows up inside a barn is not appropriate to the species, they say.
01:47 They want to ban the practice. A law is already being worked on.
01:53 We are planning to amend the animal rights laws with a new paragraph, 3a.
01:59 So in future cattle can't be tied up anymore. There's going to be a phase-out over five years.
02:07 Wolfgang Scholz of the Agricultural Union wants to stop the initiative.
02:12 It would be the end of the Buchner farm and approximately 10,000 other dairy farms across the country.
02:18 There is, however, a back door. The cows can stay inside if they get out of the barn twice a week to trot around.
02:25 But there's a house and there's a house and over there's a church and there's just not enough space.
02:31 This will never be allowed. It's not possible.
02:35 Christoph Buchner is frustrated. He wants to continue farming here.
02:40 The only clear path for him to invest more than one million euros in a barn outside of town.
02:45 Then again, the end of diesel tax refunds and volatile prices for milk are frightening farmers.
02:51 They don't see how they could possibly invest these kinds of money.
02:55 You take over a farm, you want to preserve it, you want to invest and expand it,
03:00 but I certainly don't want to ruin this business so I could lose it one day.
03:05 That I couldn't live with.
03:09 There are some government aid programs to help, but the Buchners feel overwhelmed by the bureaucracy.
03:15 They just want to keep going like they did for generations.
03:19 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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