Development of a Sustainable Food Act (NLG) as an analogy to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) of the energy industry

The "Blueprint for Agriculture" project is developing an instrument that transfers the basic principles of the EEG to the production of agricultural products. The basic idea is to pay a fixed "feed-in tariff" for sustainably produced food, similar to the Renewable Energy Sources Act, and to distribute the cost difference between market prices and the actual costs of providing ecosystem services to all products in the form of a levy. The large-scale provision of ecosystem services requires a financing mechanism that distributes the higher costs across society as a whole in the mass market. The instrument bears the working title Ecosystem Services Act - ÖLG. It is being developed using the example of the urgent area of biodiversity in the agricultural landscape. However, a future extension of this Ecosystem Services Act (ÖLG) to other aspects such as animal welfare, climate protection or water conservation is also being discussed.

The project has two main areas of focus

Firstly, the focus is on the instrument itself: the organisation of income and expenditure is described and measures and transaction costs are estimated. The level of the mark-up for individual product groups is determined.

Where are important "bottlenecks" through which large quantities of production are channelled into the trade? Which products are included? How is the collection of the surcharge organised - which existing structures can be used here?

The second focus is the development of an operationalisable target system for the implementation of biodiversity targets. The basis for this is the comparison of existing biodiversity resources and the derivation of a target image at district level. Based on this comparison, the gap between the actual situation and the target value can be identified and the need for measures to close this gap can be determined. This is based on the need for measures in two model regions - one arable and one grassland region. Based on the need for measures, the implementation costs are to be derived, which would then have to be financed in future via a levy system.